


Ties that bind

by starsonyourskin



Category: The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: Case Fic, Current Events, Detectives, Edinburgh, F/F, London, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-11-23 11:52:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11401863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsonyourskin/pseuds/starsonyourskin
Summary: A mediocre MP is found strangled in his guest bedroom. Hundreds of miles away in Edinburgh, Dominique makes a discovery about her sister, who went missing fifteen years ago. DSI Stella Gibson has had her confidence shaken after the catastrophe of the Belfast strangler. The more she finds out about the world of men in this case, the more sinister it becomes. Can she find the killer before he spreads his poison through Stella's safe London borough?My season 4 of The Fall. Finished, updated weekly in 5 installments.





	1. The Robe

“Your bedroom is just to the left, Keith,” the bald man said. 

“Why did you leave your shoes outside the garden gate?” Keith slurred. “Is okay if you wear them inside.” He stumbled into the guest bedroom, not his bedroom that he shared with his wife, who was away for the weekend, and fell into bed. He was so drunk he didn’t even bother with his clothes, and was half asleep within seconds.

“Turn over,” the bald man said.

“No, no, fine, fine here.” Keith mumbled.

“We’ve got to get your clothes off, turn over.”

Keith rolled over in one floppy motion and spread out on the bed, legs dangling off the end. He started snoring loudly, his nostrils flaring with every out breath.

The bald man’s hands were shaking. He got out a plastic bag with a cord from his pocket. He stood perfectly still for a moment to compose himself, and to stop the tears from coming. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m so, so sorry. But I have to. No-one can find out what we’ve done.” He opened the bag with his gloved hands and pulled it over Keith’s head, who was in a deep drunken slumber. He pulled the cord at Keith’s neck, and tied it. Nothing much happened for a minute, except that with every breath, Keith sucked in a part of the plastic bag. 

The man couldn’t compose himself anymore, and left the bedroom to stand just around the corner. He heard Keith wake up because of his lack of oxygen, softly saying “don’t; stop.” Tears streamed down the man’s face silently, which he wiped away. Keith was screaming for help now, for him, muffled by the bag, and he could hear him clawing at it. Unfortunately for Keith, the bag couldn’t be ripped apart. The man put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. He stood there for a couple of minutes. When he unplugged his ears, there was silence.

***

Stella Gibson had to restrain herself from breaking out in a trot along Upper Tollington Park. She was late for her session with Dr Klein. Even though it was a Saturday, she felt that she needed to wear heels today, which made walking fast harder. Her heel scraped with each step, the rubber worn out. Turning onto the main road towards Holloway, her panic subsided a little. She had ten minutes to get to the end of the road, and she was going to be okay. Fucking anxiety, she thought to herself. It was only then that she realised the day was golden and warm.

Dr Klein was a small woman with an intense gaze and an immense calm. She always wore cardigans. Her heart-shaped face was etched with the lines of a life well-lived, and her dark hair was draped elegantly into an updo that never changed. 

“Stella.” Dr Klein greeted her warmly, and gestured to her to sit down, while she smoothed the skirt of her dress to sit down herself.

Stella’s anxiety caught up with her and spread from the pit of her stomach to her breathing. She was preparing for confrontation, like a cat circling its competition. She took a deep breath to get out of this mindset — this was Dr Klein, her loyal, calm, non-judgemental therapist, not her work. When you’re on high alert for most of your life it’s hard to shake it. 

“How are you?” Dr Klein folded her hands in her lap, her notebook on the round glass table next to her, ready for notes.

“Fine.” She was going to have to do better than that. She angled herself towards Dr Klein, who, she was sure, could see through her. She hated opening up. “I’ve been anxious, recently. I worry about things I didn’t used to worry about. I get anxious about the washing-up. About postponing it, doing it, leaving it. Or being late. I was very worried I was going to be late today.”

“I see,” Dr Klein said. “And what do you tell yourself when you’re worried about being late?”

Stella narrowed her eyes for a bit, searching inside her own head. “That I’m leaving people waiting, that I can’t do simple things right, even if my professional life is very demanding. That I’m messing something up other people can do easily.”

“And do you feel anxious about being late when you’re working?”

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

“Right. And what would happen in your personal life, if you were late? Say, five minutes late?”

The simplicity, the transparency of the question irritated Stella. As if she didn’t know that she was being irrational.

“Not much, I guess. My friends would wait for me, or send me a text. They’d get annoyed with me if I did it frequently.”

“I think that’s right. I think you’re spot on. That’s what would happen. Can you do me a favour, Stella, and over the course of the next week, send a text to a friend when you think you’re going to be late?”

“But often when I think I’m going to be late, I don’t end up being late, and if I sent them a text it would be confusing.” Stella resented Dr Klein’s interference in her life. 

“Well, perhaps you could word it in a way that you think it’s likely that you’re going to be late, leaving room for the chance that you won’t be. And can you do me another favour, and actually be late to something? For five, or ten minutes? Just the once.” 

Dr Klein’s suggestion was met with an uncomfortable silence from Stella. Her hands, which had been taking notes while Stella was talking, were folded neatly back into her lap. If this was contest of who was going to be silent the longest, Dr Klein was going to win it. Stella had tried this before.

In a small voice, Stella said: “I don’t think I can do that, Dr Klein.” 

“Why not, Stella?”

Stella hated this. It felt like a jump in the dark with no guarantee for landing. Or landing on concrete.

“Because I…” Stella’s voice faltered. “I don’t want to disappoint people in my life.” Admitting it felt like weakness.

“I don’t think anyone thinks that, Stella.” 

The clock behind Stella’s head ticked away the seconds, one by one. Stella recrossed her legs. 

Dr Klein tried again. “Did you feel this way before Belfast?” 

“This has nothing to do with Belfast,” Stella said, raising her voice. “Nothing,” she repeated more calmly, but resolutely. She crossed her arms and looked out of the window onto a lush tree shading the main road. The branches were squigly and plentiful, the blossoms dry and withered, falling down in a steady shower of petals.

Dr Klein changed tactics. “Where does this idea come from, that you are messing up, that you are a disappointment?”

Hearing her own words repeated back to herself brought tears to her eyes. She pursed her lips and hid her mouth behind her fist. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “All I know is that this,” she gestured to her heels and dressy trousers, “this doesn’t work any more. The armour doesn’t protect me like it used to.”

***

A few chunks of the crowd had remained after Keith’s speech, mostly constituents he had met before and leaders of local public services and charities. Overcast weather was cooling down a hot day in a buzzing North London constituency. 

“Sir?” A gangly, gaunt man in a red baseball cap walked up to Keith. Keith had just finished taking a selfie with a young Labour supporter who was earnestly pledging him to vote Labour in his constituency in the upcoming election. He turned to the man: “Good to meet you, sir. What’s your name?” 

“I’m Harry. And I just want to talk to you about my illness. I’ve been sick since I was a boy. I have a degenerative disease and it means that I get weaker and weaker as time goes on. With this new government I’ve seen so many cuts to my Disability Living Allowance that I’ve had to sell a lot my possessions to —”

Keith interrupted him. “I share your concern, Harry — can I call you Harry?” Harry nodded, caught off guard by his interruption. “That’s why I’m part of a group of Labour MPs who are actively working on giving more support to disabled people, and just this week —”

“But, sir, the thing you’ve got to understand is that it used to be better. Before the cuts came I had decency. I had a carer that came round that used to help me wash. That was taken away from me. I had money to spend on proper food. That was taken away. I don’t have much now. I don’t have much to look forward to. I don’t care about you working on this, that or the other. I want my money back, and I’ll believe you when it’s in my pocket.” Harry’s eyebrows furrowed in pent-up resentment, and he jabbed his finger at Keith, poking him in the chest twice. Keith took a step closer to him and gently put his hand on his shoulder.

“I know, Harry. I know.” Keith softened his tone. “It’s cruel, what’s happened. It’s not on. I know you know that. And I want to make things better for you.”

Harry looked Keith in the eye.“I hate to say this Mr Grayling, but I’m not sure if I believe any of this anymore.” He gestured vaguely to the throngs of people waiting for their turn with their MP, and the red and yellow signs shouting For the many, not the few. ”I’m sorry if I get upset sometimes, but it is upsetting. I don’t want to be convinced to vote for you only to be let down.”

“I know it can look like that, yes. But we care, we really do. That’s why we want to win, so that we can do our jobs. And we can’t do it without people like you.”

Harry still looked uncomfortable, and didn’t know what to say to make his point. He shrugged and seemed resigned to the fact that he got his story out, no matter the outcome.

“Sir? The car is waiting for you next appointment.” Marina, who was holding a clipboard and two mobile phones, gently nudged her MP to the car.

“Yes, just a second, Marina,” Keith said. He put his hand back on Harry’s shoulder and guided him to take a few steps away from his assistant. “I want you to come and see me. I have surgery hours, so you can come and talk to me in a bit more detail about your situation, and we can see if we can do something for you now, not after the election. Maybe we can give you some help with the council. Or we can find a charity that can help with your paperwork. Would you like that?”

Harry slowly nodded. Yes, yes, he would like that.

***

The drive home was one his favourite parts of the day. Silence. At last. No-one asking him if he could quickly sign a letter, follow up on an email, or sign off on a speech. Just him, the car, and the road. And the traffic. It wasn’t too bad today. When he got home, a blue Ford Focus was pulling into the driveway at the same time. 

“Hi dear,” Keith gave his wife a peck on the cheek. “Had a good day?”

“Same as always,” she replied, fetching a heavy briefcase from the seat of her car. “How was yours?” 

“Not bad, not bad,” Keith said. They walked up the winding cobble path to their front door, past the carefully tended flower beds with English roses, snapdragon and hollyhock, and he held the door for Nicola. As they were shedding their coats, bags and shoes in the hallway, Keith said:

“I’ve made reservations for tonight, if you want them. At the new Ottolenghi place. Don’t think either of us feel like cooking.”

“Oh, I haven’t got anything to wear,” Nicola said. “Not since we’ve gone on that diet of yours. I don’t fit into any of my old stuff.” 

Keith nodded and walked to the dining table, which stood in the centre of their L-shaped living room and opened up into the kitchen, where last night’s dishes were piled up unwashed.

“I thought so. That’s why I bought you a dress,” he said. He got a paper shopping bag out of his rucksack and put it on the table. “I hope you like it.” He knew she would, it was her favourite brand, and every time a friend of hers wore something with a similar neckline, she’d comment on it, saying how lovely it was.

“Keith! You shouldn’t have. How on earth did you have the time to find this? Oh, it’s red.” She gently lifted the delicate fabric out of the bag and held it up to see its full length. “It’s very daring.” 

He smiled and nuzzled his wife’s neck, his arms clasped around her waist. “Maybe you can try it on?” 

Nicola let herself relax into his embrace, smelling his workday sweat and remnants of this morning’s aftershave. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” 

He followed her upstairs and sat on the bed as she peeled off her everyday layers and pulled on the red dress, and assisted her with the zip on the back. She looked at herself critically in the mirror, turning this way and that. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly. 

***

“Good morning. Let’s start with DI Todd,” Stella said. Eight tables were arranged into a square in the meeting room, and Nadia Todd was near the front. Her voluminous brown hair was gathered in a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she had soft, big, brown eyes and melodious voice. She’d always been the smartest, hardest-working girl in class and intended to keep it that way. The entire room, including Stella, liked receiving briefings from her.

DI Todd nodded. “There’s been very little activity over the last 24 hours in the borough. After an arrest was made in the McMillan case, a rape that occurred two weeks ago, it has quieted down considerably. McMillan’s family is deeply rooted in the community, and the lack of progress on the case was frustrating to them, but there have been no further incidents since the arrest. DSI Gibson granted permission to extend the time in custody with an additional twelve hours to charge, and since then we have been liaising with the prosecutor to put the case together.” She forced a shy smile to indicate that she’d finished.

“Thank you, DI Todd. I’ll leave it up to DS Hayes to go over the risk assessment matrix for the remaining cases for the next 24 hours.” 

As DS Hayes steadily worked down the list, Stella’s focus began to wander. Her work had been slow lately, and her team was warily putting feelers out to see if she’d laugh at their jokes, or take up their invitations of post-work drinks, like she’d done before. More worryingly, she had a one-to-one with her boss today, and she knew that these questions would come up again.

Later that day, Stella found herself standing in front of her boss’s desk, waiting for her to acknowledge her.

“Do take a seat, Gibson,” Emily Beauchamp said without looking up from her computer screen.

Emily was a birdlike, nervous woman, who, whenever she wrote on the whiteboard would go back and retrace her writing two, three times. There was no sense of urgency about her, and she had a fearful demeanour. Stella had found herself baffled at why she’d been promoted up this rank, until she realised the extent and depth of Beauchamp’s preparation for everything. The careful, methodical paragraphs of text that preceded every meeting, presentation, and operation. The arguments and thoughts that run continuously in Beauchamp’s mind, predicting every possible response and situation. Perhaps fear was a good thing in policing. Sometimes the worst did come true, and Beauchamp could react at a second’s notice, like a snake ready to bite. When she was in coaching mode she would look at you with eyes wide open, hanging on your every word, willing your sentences to come out of you faster, nodding quick small nods between every pause. And then she’d disagree with everything you just said. 

Stella let herself look at the parts of her Chief Superintendent she’d normally overlook in conversation. She enjoyed the do-I, don’t I, of asking herself if she was attracted to her, and she always settled on no. Emily had a square face with round apple cheeks, and her skin glowed. Her hair was brown, and hung neatly in a layered mid-length cut around her face. She was pretty, but her anxiety was decidedly unsexy. 

“Right then. Gibson. Fill me in on the McMillan case.”

As Stella talked, Emily typed notes without stopping, and when Stella finished, she took two quiet minutes to compare the information she’d given to the data she had on file, while making apologies about doing so every thirty seconds. Stella knew now to be fastidious and exacting with everything she said. Sometimes there was no better teacher than a boss who was the opposite of you. 

“The other thing I just wanted to mention to you today is your morale post-Belfast. I initially sent you out because you wanted to, and I thought it would be good for your development. But it’s had a real knock-on effect on your performance here, Gibson. Can you tell me how you’re managing that?” Emily was doing the wide-eyed thing again. You’d be fooled into thinking it was concern, when it was really judgement. Stella braced herself. 

“I can assure you that I’ve got it under control. The Spector case was challenging from the start, and further complicated by developments that none of us could have foreseen. It affected me in the short term, while was working long hours, but I should be returning back to normal now.”

“Yet, Gibson, you’ve been here for nearly a month and your colleagues have reported a change in your performance. You are withdrawn, delegate more, and show less leadership. Has the Spector case affected your confidence?”

“Absolutely not. I’ve just needed to recharge for a little while, but I hear what you are saying and I will do everything I can to improve my performance.” 

Emily nodded slowly. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “I know that it is anathema for senior police officers to admit trauma and stress, but I just want you to know that if you were to take up any of the counselling that’s available to you, it would have zero impact on your next promotion, whether that’s across the force or moving up.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Stella said. All she wanted was to get away from Emily’s scrutinising gaze as soon as possible. They were nice words, and she herself had said them before to other officers, but she knew better. Whispers would follow her, and if not officially on her record, they would informally. She’d rather go through basic training again than admit that she was going to therapy.

“I’ve also had the official outcome of the ombudsman come through, which we already knew about. So you needn’t worry about it anymore. I’m very pleased that she recognised your work and that there won’t be any further consequences.”

***

Stella’d bought her place shortly after becoming a detective. Her father had left a small lump sum that covered the deposit, and with her promotion she could afford higher mortgage payments. It was too big for her, because back then she’d had some vague notion that there would be someone to live with, eventually. She’d been there for eighteen years. It was white, and minimalist, and the longer she lived there the less she had any plans for redoing it, despite a little damp patch peeking through the paint in the bathroom, and crumbling white flakes on the windowsills. The taps needed replacing, because the one in the bathroom wouldn’t stop leaking. It drove her absolutely bonkers when she was trying to sleep. It was one of those jobs that was so easy you never got around to doing them. Perhaps especially now with Reed in her life, she wanted this flat to be hers and hers alone. Reed was still living with family while finding her feet, and would come over for Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, and that’s how Stella liked it. Today was Tuesday, and Reed had texted twice already. Stella wasn’t in the mood for any human interaction, but couldn’t help but look at the text when she heard it chime. 

_We’ve got some leftovers from last night, I could pop round and drop them off if you like? Hope you’ve had a good day, Stella star._

Stella turned over her phone. There was something about the cloying sweetness of the message, like toffee stuck to her front teeth, that irritated her immensely. Reed had kids to do homework with, bathe, and tuck into bed, she shouldn’t also worry about Stella’s supper. She poured herself a glass of red and popped two slices of bread into the toaster. Cheese on toast. Her open cases didn’t really need any looking into, but she had nothing better to do, so she spread out her files over her kitchen table while her sandwich was being heated up. This is how most nights were, now. Stella found she had to occupy herself with something, or her mind would start to wander to places she didn’t want to go.

***

“Marina, when you’re ready.” Keith stood in the doorway of his office in Westminster. His office was a closed rectangular space with a meeting table, his desk off to the side of the window, and the table flanked with bookcases that you bumped into when you pulled out your chair. All of the researchers were lumped into one cramped room next to it, eight of them sharing four desks. It got so hot in the summer that you could feel the sweat of his personnel in the air when you first walked into the room. The windows didn’t open in this part of the building.

He offered her water, which she refused. “I just need to talk to you about the speech you prepared for the local news yesterday. I’ll be direct about this. It was utter rubbish. Cliched, hackneyed, ripped straight from whatever local newsletter you found that a party volunteer wrote—”

Marina was used to this by now. She had tried acquiescing, deflecting, and settled on defending. It was the only type of speech that seemed to make some impact on him. “Sir, can I just remind you that it was based on the notes you gave me the day before. If you have any other notes that you’d like me to incorporate, I can give you a second draft later today.”

“What I am saying, Marina, if you will let me finish my sentence, is that I am not sure if you have what it takes. I know that HQ can be a lot more slack about good writing and fastidiousness than many of the parliamentarians are, so it might be time for you to start enquiring. The level of creativity and the depth of messaging that I need, well, I’m just starting to doubt more and more about your hire. I’ve told you this before, and you haven’t stepped up your game.” He didn’t expect a reply and looked at his watch. “PMQ time.” He got up, and walked to the other room to find the work experience girl. “Sarah, you’re here for the event of the week. The colosseum of our time. Would you like to pop along with me?” 

Marina watched the sixteen year-old shuffle along with Keith and out into the hallway. With a sigh she went back to her desk.

“Weekly bollocking?” her colleague Mark asked.

“Yep.” 

“He doesn’t mean it, you know,” Mark said.

“I know. I just wish he’d stop doing it or find someone else.”

“He’s not too bad.”

“That’s what you think,” Marina said, swiveling her chair towards him. “He doesn’t speak to you like you’re some dimwitted dumb dumb who can’t string a sentence together. You’re not roped into doing his diary despite the fact that being an office assistant was nowhere near your job description as communication adviser. It’s as if he likes the idea of a young woman following him around and waiting on him hand and foot.” 

Mark continued his game of Solitaire and didn’t say anything. 

“Sorry,” Marina said. “Now I’m taking it out on you. But you wouldn’t understand. You were given a plush job from the start.”

***

Stockbridge used to be a little town of its own, but it was now firmly ensconced in the city enclaves of Edinburgh. A market popped up every Sunday, next to a cobblestone bridge over the River Leith. The three-storey houses looked gothic and slightly grim, with their native sandstone covered in a thin layer of soot, but the shops on the ground floor were painted in bright colours: Costa Coffee red, bright blue, blue-green. Dominique Addison had been living on a side street off the main bustle of Stockbridge high street (which, truth be told, wasn’t much of a bustle at all), in a terraced house with a garden out front. Her door was the same bright blue you’d find on the high street, and her neighbours on either side had a bay window, but she did not. It was a modest house, but so were the houses of her family that had grown up in Edinburgh, and it suited her fine, especially after her divorce. 

Dominique had a sister, Mairi. She hadn’t heard from her in 15 years. The police said the case was closed, but she didn’t go a day without looking for her in some form. Still in her robe, she put the kettle on for the second cuppa of the day, and listened to the contented sounds that her 1-year-old was making, who was playing in the other room.

Mairi had had boyfriends and a group of mates who were sometimes arrested for a minor offences. Mostly small stuff, that she’d done too but rarely got caught for, like possessing weed, vandalism, stealing from an off-licence, buying alcohol for an underaged friend. Dominique had been following some of them to see for whom it was just a phase, and more importantly, for whom it wasn’t. They’d taken pity on her, Mairi’s slightly fat sister, and her endless quest, and sometimes answered her questions honestly. Dominique had been a touchstone for some, an unasked constant, which led to some of them opening up and telling her about Mairi’s past, and theirs. Sex work had started out as an easy way to get money. Most of them had just got their GCSE’s and left school. There was nothing else that would provide the same hourly rate without experience or qualifications, and Edinburgh, as the well-educated capital of Scotland, needed both. For many it had started from a young age, who were pressured into it by friends, for some it had turned into a lucrative career. These girls, most of them from public schools, had held onto the boyfriends of their youth and followed them. Unlike English police, the policing strategy in Edinburgh was to mostly turn a blind eye, and ensure access to services for the workers. It kept them alive, and mostly, out of prison. So Dominique could find them.

Mairi’d always been the charismatic one out of the two, with naturally long, slender limbs and bone structure that turned everyone’s heads. Dominique kept an image in her head of her face, that she’d change every year. On Mairi’s birthday she imagined a new wrinkle, slightly droopier eyelids, and her ill-advised teenage tattoo, an outline of a cartoon heart on the inside of her wrist near the joint, faded a bit more, a little greener. Mairi would be thirty-four on August 4th. 

For years, Dominique had refused to believe her little sister went down the same path as her friends. But the story checked out again and again, with a boyfriend as a witness. The police had assumed, shortly after her vanishing, that she’d been murdered by a client, and the case was closed quickly, despite the fact that no body had ever been found. With years of effort and determination, Mairi knew fairly certain now that she’d worked as a high class escort during her first year at uni. 

Those services usually held passports of their clients and made copies of them, for safety. And today, a national charity that kept records of every difficult or violent client had sent her the records of men active in the area in the late nineties, early aughts. Getting those records hadn’t been easy. She felt a flood of excitement when she realised that one name in particular stood out to her.

***

The man’s hands were shaking when he tiptoed back to Keith’s room. It was completely silent, and he lay very still. Keith’d wet himself, and a large urine stain darkened the bed covers. He got out a knife from his pocket, and with some effort cut the cord of the bag, very carefully trying not to maim Keith’s neck, and slipped it off his head. He left the house and got his shoes from outside the garden fence, and opened the car door to retrieve a carefully folded up the blanket that covered the driver’s seat, and put it in his bag. He left on foot.

***


	2. A Moveable Jewel

When Stella turned into the lane towards the scene, the coroner had already arrived. Getting out of bed had been difficult this morning, her head throbbing mildly after finishing the bottle of wine last night, like a vise tightening and loosening randomly. She lifted the cordon tape and found the acting officer in charge. London’s residential areas weren’t exactly surb-urban, but it was quiet, like a cul-de-sac in a small town in the green belt. 

“Who found the body?” she asked, while accepting the Tyvek suit and shoe covers. 

“His wife, earlier this morning. She was coming back from a trip. It’s a local MP.”

“Her, or the deceased?”

“The deceased.”

“Right. Then we can expect journalists to show up here any minute. Can you extend the cordon and set up a tent near the entrance? I’m going to go and see the body while they’re photographing, and I want to take the preliminary statement from the wife as well as the official one. Then please organise the door-to-door after the journalists have dispersed. I’ll take your decision log.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She rang Emily before she’d get swept away in the chaos inside, and arranged for a press conference later that afternoon.

Inside she found Todd and Hayes, one with a video camera, the other collecting dry evidence in bags. They greeted her and Hayes warned about the smell in the bedroom. She could detect a faint whiff of it from here, the living room. It smelled like the boys’ urinals at school. She made sure her mask covered her nose and went to see the body. It wasn’t just urinals that she smelled when she stepped into the room, but a meat-y, butcher’s smell, just short of decay, that seemed to appear much quicker than warranted. The second thing she noticed was that the urine had dried into a pale yellow stain on the white bed covers, and thirdly, that he was still fully clothed and wore a suit. His face was contorted, as if he’d been struggling, his hands balled into fists. It was an ugly picture, and it had taken her years to stop seeing these images flash through her mind before she went to bed at night.

She made sure her hair was tied back properly underneath her cap and leaned over the body from the side of the bed. 

She called out to the other room. “DI Todd?”

It was only now that she could hear a woman sobbing out in the garden. Probably his wife.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Who is taking care of the wife? And what’s her name?”

“Her name’s Nicola, and she asked for some moments alone, ma’am.”

“Right. Now, do you see this here?” Stella pointed to a short black hair on the bedspread with her pinky finger. Nadia stepped closer to Stella and leaned over from the other side.

“Our victim is blonde,” Stella said. What colour hair does Nicola have?”

“She’s a redhead, ma’am.”

“Then this might be significant. Please bag it.”

DI Todd carefully lifted the hair with a pair of tweezers and put it in a small bag. She stood waiting for Stella to speak, because she liked to process her thoughts with her subordinates as a way of instruction.

“I don’t see any marks of the body from this distance, nor any trauma, but we’ll have to wait for the autopsy results to be conclusive. Is there anything else you can detect about the body that you find significant?”

DI Todd slowly scanned the body from head to toe. The man’s eyes were open, but only half-lidded. He looked tense, and his legs were slightly bent at the knees but lying flat, feet angled towards each other. The pallor of his skin unsettled her, because it was close to a living man, but not quite.

Stella interrupted her thoughts. “Do you see the volume of urine, DI Todd? What does that tell you?”

“That he might have had a lot to drink. He may have been drinking,” she stumbled over her words, keen to impress. Stella noticed.

“That’s right. And that’s as far as our assumptions can go before we find out more about his bloodwork. Can you go and inform the wife that I’ll talk to her in a second?” 

Stella briefly touched his chest with her gloved finger to check his temperature. He was cold, and had probably been dead for at least three hours. She let the coroner in to document the scene and remove the body. 

Nicola was standing in their back garden, facing away from her. She was nodding when DI Todd asked a question. Stella took off her mask and held it in her hand.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Stella said.

Nicola looked at her with her hands clasped over her mouth, her head turned away from her, and said nothing.

“I’m Superintendent Stella Gibson, and I’m in charge of this investigation. You may have spoken to my colleagues earlier this morning. Can I ask you some questions before we take you to the station for a statement? My colleague DI Todd will be taking notes.”

“He can’t be dead. He can’t be. We’re going on holiday in two weeks’ time.” She kept her hand clasped over her mouth and turned away from Stella. 

“Is there anyone we can call who can be here for you?”

Nicola shook her head. “No…. Or, wait, my sister. But she lives in Southwark.”

“That’s okay, I’ll be with you while she travels. Do you want to call her?” 

Nicola nodded and made the call. 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t offer you anything to drink while we’re investigating. Can you stay at your sister’s in the meantime?”

Nicola looked dazed and sat down on one of the garden chairs. Stella realised it was too much to take in for her at the moment, and tried to bring her back to the present.

“Can you tell me how you found him?”

“I… I came back from my trip with my sister, and I thought that he had left for work already. I noticed a disgusting smell coming from the guest room, and thought that he might have gone out late and vomited and not cleaned it up, so I went to check…” She started crying again.

“And when you went into the room, did you touch him at all?” 

“No, I just… the first thing I thought, just a flash before I properly took it all in was that he’d been so tired in the morning that he went back to sleep in the guest room, but he was lying all funny and it was so obvious that it wasn’t him anymore. He was so pale. And the… piss had dried.”

“I’m so sorry,” Stella said. “What was he like in his relations with others? Did he have any hostility or arguments with friends, family or colleagues?”

Nicola shook her head and let out a breath that was more of a sob than an exhale. “I mean, he worked in politics. But everyone loved him. He was very approachable, and always made sure people in the party felt he had a good head on his shoulders, and could see both sides of an issue.”

“So there’s no-one at all that comes to mind?”

Nicola became very quiet and took a deep breath. “I’m not proud to say this, but I really disliked one of his members of staff. I heard her gossip about him when she didn’t know who I was.”

“And did he dislike her too?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I think he quite liked her.” 

“Okay. We’re going to need her name and address later. Who has access to the house? Anyone with keys?” Stella smiled encouragingly.

“My sister. And us. There’s no keys under the flower pot or anything like that.” She hugged herself and started rocking back and forth. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said. “I don’t think I can organise the funeral and deal with all the paperwork and the press and his colleagues. It’s too much.” 

“It’s normal to feel that way,” Stella said. “You’re just feeling overwhelmed. My colleague will give you a ride to the station once your sister’s arrived, and we’ll talk more then, okay?” 

Nicola nodded, and Stella signalled to DS Hayes that he should stay with her for comfort. Stella walked to the side of the house and started going through a mental checklist of her priorities. 

  
***  


The air was warm and the morning new. Dominique loved this time of day in the Addison household. Her toddler, Angelica, was looking up at her and making cooing sounds. She took a few steps back and beckoned her to come. Angelica crowed with delight of this new game. She pulled herself up by the leg of the garden table and stood wobbling, and then one chubby little leg gave way and she fell back on her bum. She looked at her mum in surprise and with a few seconds’ delay shrieked angrily. Dominique went to her and pulled her up by one of her fat toddler hands, and then let go. Angelica held on to the table leg and looked at her mother expectantly.

“You can do it,” Dominique said. “Come to me, sweetheart.” She held out her hands and took a step backwards. Angelica cooed, confused and gleeful. She took one wobbly step towards her mother and then faceplanted onto the grass, where Dominique scooped her up and held her closely to her chest.

“Well done, my darling. Such a big girl. You’re such a big girl.” They both giggled with mirth.

***

Reed greeted Stella with a long kiss on Stella’s doorstep. She snaked her hand across Stella’s waist and squeezed. Stella felt a surge of joy, a lightheadedness, and wanted to stay here a little longer. Instead, Reed broke the kiss.

“Never thought I’d see you again, Gibson,” Reed said slightly accusingly, looking at her sidelong with her eyes half-closed in mock anger. 

Stella was taken aback by the sudden transition and felt a pang of anger, but didn’t show it. “I’ve just picked up a new case today. It’s a local MP,” she said by way of explanation, while guiding her through the hallway with her hand on the small of Reed’s back.

“Yes, today,” Reed said. “But I haven’t heard from you in weeks. You’re pulling back.”

“My God, can we not start this so early on?” Stella surprised herself with how loud and defensive she sounded. 

Without missing a beat, Reed began telling a story. “You know, I took my girls to see the beavers in Devon on Sunday. After nearly five hundred years of extinction, they’ve appeared again in the wild, here. My girls love them because they’re so cute, and they seem like people in how they construct their own dens. We went on a tour with a couple of other families, and the tour guide was saying how beavers find a place that has a foundation, that has a dry spot and an underwater spot, and they collect twigs and debris to make a dam that stops the flow of water so they can enjoy their underwater home without a current. They build a den that keeps her and her babies dry, with an underwater entrance, a slide, that gives them easy access to the water. And every so often, when the current is particularly strong, some of their dens will fall apart and they have to rebuild a bit of it. But they don’t seem to mind, they like to keep busy. “

Stella looked at her with surprise. “That’s… nice?”

“What I’m saying is,” Reed continued, “that I know I’m not going to find a steady homebuilder in you, as ridiculous as that sounds. You’d sabotage your own den before you even started to decorate it.”

“Okay. You don’t need to be rude about it.”

Reed moved away from her and towards the window. “I think we should just be clear about what we’re doing, and just let me know if you’re going to disappear for a bit.” 

Stella put her hands on the countertops to steady herself, and let the feeling of cool granite on her fingertips calm her down. “No, you’re right, I’m sorry. I should have said. I just didn’t plan to… to stop contacting you for so long. It just happened.”

“Okay. So what do you want then? Once a week? Twice a week? Once a fortnight? Weekends only?” Reed asked with coldness in her voice. 

“I don’t know,” Stella said softly. 

“Whenever you feel like it,” Reed said, with her eyebrows raised. “That’s what you want. And that’s fine. But I have this feeling deep down that if I were to say no once, you wouldn’t like it. You want to set the terms without argument or input from me.”

“No, not at all,” Stella said. “I think that’s just your sense of it.”

“I think you’re deluding yourself by making it out to sound like it’s just me. I’m sure that if you’d really search yourself, you’ll find that you’ve done this before, to other people.”

“Reed, I didn’t invite you over so you could ream me out,” Stella said. She was annoyed, yes, but she wanted to get back to stroking Reed’s back and shoulders, like she did last time she saw her, before Reed had to leave really early in the morning to be on time for the school run. So she said it gently, with a note of apology, and took her in her arms. “I don’t think that’s why you came here either.”

***

Stella was looking at an impressive array of paperwork, some in boxes, others in loosely organised piles in the evidence room while DI Todd went through and explained. They had cleared out a dingy room and put some canvas on the floor. The floor was covered in piles arranged in squares, separated with space between them, like a one-dimensional Rubik’s cube.

“This section is all taken from his office in Westminster, while this is from his constituency office,” she pointed to two opposite sides of the room, “and this in the middle is from his home office. That’s really as far as we’ve got to in terms of categorisation, because we didn’t want staff to interfere with any of the evidence before we took it away. There’s also a large amount of data that we’re holding that IT is currently looking at, including desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, from all of his staff, and his own technology.”

“Thank you, Nadia. I think we should prioritise anything that looks recent, that was found at the top of piles, and anything that looks like it was stashed away. Was there anything found in a safe, or in a locked drawer?”

“There was, mostly financial documents, and his contracts, personal assets, things like that. We haven’t really looked at it yet, just my personal observations. There was also some paperwork that he seemed to be carrying with him wherever he went, like a notebook in his bag, and a couple of boxes in the back of his car.”

“Okay, can you point me to that?”

“Of course, ma’am.” Nadia took a big step over a bunch of piles and opened a box at the far end of the room.

“Just take it with you. And find some colleagues to rearrange it so there’s enough space between it to walk. If you need more space, I’ll book out the next room.” 

Nadia nodded, and made her way back with the box in hand. She took out a Moleskin, a diary, and a manila folder. “This was in his office bag, by the door in his house I think.”

Stella opened the folder. “This looks like a police file.” 

Nadia stepped behind her and looked over her shoulder. “It’s a MisPers file,” she said. Stella ran her thumb over the name next to the picture. Addison, D. it said. Reported missing: 03-04-2010. “It’s a photocopy,” Nadia continued. “Shall I go find the corresponding electronic one?” “Yes, please do, and hand this in to be photographed and digitised please,” Stella said. “As well as the notebook and the diary.”

***

Stella left her meeting with her team, who were now working on vehicles, CCTV, witness statements, door-to-door and all the other protocol that came with a murder case. Interviews would start tomorrow.

IT had prioritised the diary, and Stella was looking at a list of events that Nadia had drawn up from the last two months, and cross-referencing it with the electronic diary that his staff kept. Nothing stood out so far, and Keith had attended at least ten events a day, which created so much information it was hard to see immediate patterns. There were a lot of drinks and canapes, select committees, internal party meetings, short 1-on-1s with staff, attending rallies and demonstrations, as well as hustings and surgeries. The same members of staff followed him around, mostly his chief of staff and his communication advisor, who seemed to be doubling as an assistant. She wrote a note to start with them tomorrow, and made a mental priority list for the interviews. Nadia was flagged down to start an attendance list of all his events in the last week. There was one event on the last day that wasn’t on his official schedule, but was in his diary. A symposium.

There was something here that was bugging Stella, but she didn’t know what it was. Out of frustration she opened Google and typed in Keith’s name, then clicked “images.” The first couple of pages were portraits of him that accompanied news articles. He was a little ill-at-ease in front of the camera, and his shirt and jacket were often creased. It was a few pages down that other people started to appear in the photographs. 

A steaming mug of tea was put in front of her by one of her officers. 

“Thanks,” Stella said. She looked at her watch and went back to what she should be doing, which was creating an overview of the tasks at hand and deciding a course of action. The diary should probably be given to one of her subordinates, but she’d wanted a quick look at it first. 

When she looked up again at her watch it was two hours later. She saved her documents, closed down the database, and copied down some notes in her own notebook, with the intention of going for a short walk. Before she closed Internet Explorer she hesitated, and moved her cursor back to a picture of Keith. There was a man in the background that she’d seen before. Many of the people in Keith’s pictures were there frequently: other MPs, young Labour members who were the right demographic for the picture, the leader of the Party. But she couldn’t place him, and he looked just out of place enough to be significant. They shared glances in a few photos, and seemed like they knew and were fond of each other. She found a clear picture of his face and dragged it to reverse image search. More photos of the same man came up, including one on Facebook. She clicked on it, and it took her to a profile of Dick Kelly. She searched for him on the database, and nothing matching his picture came up. So she Googled him. Nothing, even with Labour added. She looked more closely at his picture. He wore an immaculate blue suit, with brown brogues, the uniform that many of his peers wore. Although they probably wouldn’t wear blue in the chamber. She went back to his Facebook profile and started looking through his friends. Most of them were connected to the political world. Think tanks, lobbying groups, public affairs firms. And most of them were conservative leaning: Policy Exchange, Centre for Public Policy, these names that meant little if you didn’t know who funded them or worked with them. She Googled him again, adding conservative. And he came up. Director of Fundraising. For the Conservatives. 

She went through Keith’s events of the last day, and noticed again the cross-party symposium on a soft Brexit. She picked up the receiver and dialled Nadia’s internal number. 

“Nadia, could you quickly get me a list of the attendees for the cross-party symposium on Mr Grayling’s last day? Within the hour please?”

Her fingers tapped out an impatient rhythm while she waited after she hung up.This could take a little while. She went back to the Conservative website and saw that his name was actually Richard, and Dick his nickname. So she opened another search on the database and looked for Richard. He came up this time, with a picture. He’d been charged and convicted as a teenager of a violent assault on a man. She clicked her tongue. Sometimes she hated these irrational flights of her brain that led her down a rabbit hole, that nine times out of ten, resulted in nothing. After all, there was so much more information to sort through, friends and family to interview, and she should take a systematic approach to not lose track of it all. But there was something tingling in her hindbrain that frequently led her down the right path, and made her so good at her job. And it was telling her to chase this. 

Her email alert chimed. Nadia had sent through the list of attendees, and he was on it for drinks afterwards. That was the final straw. She debated whether to send someone out to the Conservative headquarters, or to go herself, or to ring, and ask him to come in for interviews tomorrow. It was nearly five thirty, her watch told her. The case was all over the news, and members of his party were on the radio and tv to talk about him. This wasn’t a normal work day for them anymore, and had reverberations throughout all of the sector. Surely they’d want to cooperate, if just for the appearance of it for the media. She rang the Campaign Headquarters, and was put through to reception.

“Conservative Campaign Headquarters, how may I help you?” The boy on the other line sounded perky and plummy.  
  
“Good evening, my name is Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, and I am the senior investigating officer in the case of Keith Grayling. Could you put me through to Mr Richard Kelly please.”  
  
“And what’s the purpose of your call, Mrs Gibson?  
  
“DSI Gibson. I’m not at liberty to say.”  
  
“Please hold.”  
  
“I’m afraid Mr Kelly isn’t in today. May I take a message?”  
  
“Will he be in tomorrow?”  
  
“Please let me check with his secretary.”  
  
Stella stared blankly out the window while she waited.  
  
“I am afraid not, he’s on business in Edinburgh today and then on leave until the end of the week. I can leave your message for him to read as soon as he gets back.”  
  
“No need. Thank you.” Stella hung up. 

They’d have to send a letter to his address, or find him in Scotland. But first they’d have to find a compelling reason to bring him in, and she doubted Emily would be persuaded by her guesswork. He probably wasn’t the only person in political life with a dubious criminal background. He’d be relegated to lower priority interviews.

***

A single beam of moonlight streamed in through the only window Stella had neglected to draw the curtain in front of. The room was dark blue and quiet, and the ocean in her mind was still. Except for her breath, which was returning back to its normal pace.

“So are we back to twice a week?” Reed asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “Because I could do that every day, if you wanted me to.”

Her head tilted back, her arms stretched out above her, Stella was the picture of languid bliss. A few strands of her blonde hair stuck to her cheeks. She nestled her face against the soft sheets and pulled Reed towards her by the elbow.

“I’m sure you could,” she whispered against Reed’s ear. Her feet kicked the duvet up and she pulled it around them, a little warm nest for the two of them. Her fingers found their own way towards Reed’s chest, and she slowly, unhurriedly, used the palm of her hand to massage her ever so lightly. Reed settled in on her side, satisfied. Stella’s kisses trailed down the back of her neck, to the top of her spine and shoulder blades, then towards her jawline.

“You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen,” Stella said. There was no way for her to see, but she could feel Reed smile.

“Was that mushy sentiment escaping in the form of a cliche by DSI, SIO, Stella Gibson, Master of Arts, Bachelor of Social Science?” Reed teased mockingly.

“Shut up,” Stella teased back. Then, softly. “I mean it.”

Reed turned around to face her. “I feel the same. But you know this.”

“You know, I don’t. You think I’m so tough, so sure of myself, but I like hearing that.” Her fingers were stroking the baby hairs at Reed’s temples.

There was a shyness, and a vulnerability in how Reed smiled at her. “I’ll remember that.”

***

Dr Klein’s room was nearly silent, except for a ticking clock on the wall behind Stella.

“There was something so lovely about how she said it, and how she responded to me. It felt… intimate. But I thought she wanted more from me. Wanted to pin me down on how often we’d see each other. And I wanted to say it, but I just couldn’t get it out of me. It just hung in my throat.” Stella purposively avoided eye contact with Dr Klein while she said this, and saw the tree outside in a fogged up glass kind of way, not really focusing on it.

“Why do you think that is?” Dr Klein inquired gently.

Stella turned her head to look at her, returning to the present moment, and feeling self-conscious again. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold, despite it being the middle of June.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think a part of me doesn’t really want to lay it out there like that, but a part of me does. It’d be nice to see her regularly, but it also fills me with dread. Like a chill constricting my throat. It feels restrictive.” She felt ashamed of feeling like this, when Reed had done nothing to deserve it.

“Do you think that freedom comes with casting off all commitment?”

“No, I know it doesn’t. I know freedom can be found when the choices you make reflect your inner desires and needs, and you stick to them. But it’s only the rational part of my brain knows that. When I’m with her, I see a way forward, how easy it could be to allow myself to really be with her. But then when I turn my head slightly and looked at it differently, it feels like I’m betraying myself. Or who I thought I was. I made a decision a long time ago that I wouldn’t allow myself to get tangled up with someone when I don’t fit their box of who they want me to be, although I’m not so sure anymore that Reed really wants to box me in.”

“What would you need to do to be with Reed?”

“I think I’d just… have to do what I’m doing now, I guess. And not let her down. Not do anything unexpected, and to be consistently there for her.”

***

“We’ve received an anonymous tip about the case, ma’am. It looks like it could be reliable. It’s from a parliamentary number, but we can’t track the number internally,” Nadia was stood hovering on her doorpost, unsure of whether to enter when she wasn’t invited in.

Stella turned around from where she’d been standing at her window. The harsh fluorescent of her office was reflected onto the dark of the windows. It was time to go home, there was nothing much to see outside. A mug of tea was in her hands, and she was trying to make her shoulders stop creeping up from stress.

“I see. What does it say?”

“It says to add someone to our interview list. Apparently he was connected to the victim. Romantically. There were rumours circulating in the gutter press that would corroborate this.”  
  
That got Stella’s attention. Walking over to Nadia, she put her mug down and went to stand next to her and look at the scrap of paper she was holding in her hands. Nadia flinched and moved an inch away from Stella’s face. 

_020 0 7218 7924  
Female voice. Said that we should look for Richard Kelly because he was KG’s partner._

Stella’s heart started beating faster and she felt that familiar rush of adrenaline when she was closing in on something important.

“I’ve seen that name before in connection to this investigation. I think we should bring him in tomorrow. Trouble is that he’s not at his work address, and his secretary claims he is in Scotland,” Stella said.

“Well, he could still be at his home address. I could send patrol officers over there now to ask him to come in?”

“Yes, do, but first try his work again and find out where he is on business.”

Stella paced her office while she waited for more news, and picked up the file with the interview strategy for tomorrow to distract her. Hayes had drawn it up, and she’d reviewed it. A part of her couldn’t wait for tomorrow to start so the case would really start rolling, and she wouldn’t have to think so much, but could follow her instincts and experience. She looked at her messages. Reed, asking about her day. She hesitated and was tempted to ignore it, but quickly tapped out a reply and put her phone down.

Nadia came back into the room. “Ma’am, the patrol officers spoke to his brother, and he confirmed he was away. His office gave me his hotel and room number. He’ll be there till the end of the week.” 

“I see.” She paused for a moment and then gestured for Nadia to join her behind her desk. “Here’s what I’m thinking. You’ve recently passed your chief inspector’s exam, haven’t you?”

Nadia hesitated, nervous about what was coming next. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Tomorrow, you’ll be acting chief inspector. It’ll help you with your next promotion, and I think you’ll find it interesting and informative. Now, ideally, I’d be there to supervise. But I have this instinct that I should go and find Mr Kelly. I know we can work with our Scottish colleagues on this, but I think it’d be better if I went. I can take the overnight sleeper train and be back the day after tomorrow. That leaves you in charge for a day. I’ve mapped out what each member of our team should be working on, and you’ll find the details of that in here.” She rested her palm on a manila folder. “There are no briefings tomorrow, and we’ll debrief with regards to the interviews the day after tomorrow. I know you’ve led them before and I’m confident you’ll do a good job this time.” Stella looked at Nadia, who was taking it all in. “That’s settled then. Nice one, DI Todd.”

She didn’t leave any time for Nadia’s doubts or hesitation, because she found that once you let them, they’d keep flooding in. There’d be hell to pay with Emily, who would find her terribly irresponsible for skipping out on her team on the second day of an investigation, but she’d worry about that later. She grabbed her suitcase that she kept in her office under the coat rack and started making a reservation for the train on her phone while she clocked out and got a taxi towards King’s Cross.

***


	3. The Trowel

The train was nearing Newcastle, and Stella had already washed, dressed, put on makeup and attempted to fix her hair in her little cabin. She’d decided to venture out to the first class lounge for breakfast. Ballerina slippers would do for an early morning on the train she decided, and besides, she’d never been very steady on a train or boat. She needed solid ground beneath her feet. She made her way to the lounge, holding onto doorposts and the buttons that you needed to press to open the electronic doors between carriages.

MURDERED MP USED PROSTITUTES

The Daily Mail never ceased to disappoint. The headlines blared at her from the trolley at the lounge, while she tucked into her Highland breakfast. She put down her fork still speared with black pudding and bought the bloody thing. 

Below the headline, there were four bullet points:

* Colleagues say MP Keith Grayling was ‘a bit mediocre’  
* He led a committee that wanted to stop treating prostitutes as criminals  
* The Daily Mail has obtained exclusive evidence that Grayling bought prostitutes  
* Constituents feel he was ‘a hypocrite’.

Stella folded up the newspaper with a look of disdain on her face and fished out her phone out of her bag, just when Emily started calling. 

It sounded like she was at the entrance of a tube station, the gates bursting open with each beep of an Oyster card, waiting by the barriers before she’d lose coverage. “Stella, just a quick one, saw your email about Edinburgh, we’ll talk about that later. First, the newspapers, have you found anything that corroborates that? If so, we might have a leak on our hands.”

This is what she’d been worried about when she first spotted the headline. “No, nothing at all, boss. We haven’t come across any evidence related to sex work, but we are in such early stages of the investigation that we have little to go on. It might be corroborated later on. I think today will bring some clarity.”

“Fine. I’ll instruct the media liaison - we’re not going to make a statement.” And without saying goodbye, the line disconnected.

If this turned out to be true, the Met looked slow for following on the heels of the press with this sort of revelation, and Emily couldn’t have been pleased with it. Having known her boss for the better part of five years, it was Emily’s unspoken discontent that told her she needed to step up her work. Nonetheless, even if it were true, there was no evidence connecting it to the murder. 

Without thinking about it, Stella opened up Messages on her phone, and scrolled all the way down to a message received a couple months ago. Dani Ferrington. Last message sent:

 _Thank you for your well wishes, Stella. Just wanted to let you know that I’ll be going on secondment in Edinburgh starting this summer. Hoping it will prove valuable._

She hadn’t replied, even though she’d wanted to. But once she was back in London there was too much to be distracted by. So she replied now. 

_That’s great to hear Dani. Are you there now? I’m in town for a day, but a very hectic day. If we’re both free perhaps we could get a coffee._

Her spurt of early morning work hadn’t put her off her food, and she picked up the fork with black pudding with gusto. She knew now to relish these short moments before the storm once she’d arrived. This was time to think, time to be. She was on the right side of the carriage, and she’d done these journeys frequently enough to know that there would be a marvellous sea view in a few minutes. Depending on the weather, the seas would be grey, a deep navy, or a glittering Yves Klein blue. She allowed herself to wait for it.

***

The Balmoral Hotel was splendid in the summer sun, but could be best appreciated in grey skies with a pesky drizzle. These were the types of hotels her father would stay at during his business trips. The rounded pillars and archway could have you thinking it was neo-classical, but the arched windows and clocktower were decidedly more Gothic. As everything in Edinburgh, it was a sandy colour, but the soot had less of a chance to cling to it on account of the hotel’s meticulous maintenance. She’d left her case at Waverley in one of the lockers.

She made a beeline for the lift and went straight up to the third floor, where Richard Kelly was staying. Three loud knocks, and he appeared promptly.

“DSI Stella Gibson, Met Police.” She showed him her identification. He nodded and seemed resigned to her presence. He was just as immaculate as in the pictures she’d seen of him, and was wearing a three-piece suit, despite it being his day off.

“Sir, I need to ask you some questions to eliminate you from our inquiry regarding the death of Keith Grayling MP. May I come in?” 

She knew it was against protocol to go to a suspect’s residence without a second officer, but she wasn’t afraid. 

“Of course, Ms Gibson. We’re very saddened by his death.”

She stepped inside the room, plush carpet underneath her heels, and looked around for signs of another occupant. “You’ll address me as ma’am,” she said calmly. 

“Very good, ma’am.” He opened his arm wide to point to two armchairs, and took a seat himself. He had an air of pomposity about him, but the self-deprecating kind, and Stella suspected that in another universe, he would be great fun at parties.

“I take it that you know of how he died.” Richard nodded softly, and Stella continued. “We have recently become aware of your romantic relationship with the deceased. I’m very sorry for your loss. This is not an official interview, and we need you to come in at a later stage. Would you be able to tell me when you last saw him?”

“I’m not too sure, detective. I’d have to check my diary. We’d stopped seeing each other for a while.”

“It’s superintendent. Please do check. Can you tell me a bit more about your relationship with him and how it ended? How recent was your relationship?”

Richard got up and opened the bedside cabinet drawer, and took out a Moleskin, bound in leather. He walked back to his chair and leafed through it. “Probably two, three weeks ago. There was a dinner that we both attended.”

Stella knew this to be a lie, but decided not to let him know, and do some further investigation into the symposium when she got back. It’d be better to get this on tape, and to have further evidence confirming he was there besides an attendance list. She made a note, and looked up expectantly, an eyebrow raised.

“We ended things because, as you know, he was married, and he felt bad about lying to his wife. That was about three weeks ago.”

“Very well. How would you describe him in those last few weeks? Was he distressed or anxious?” 

“Well, we didn’t speak very much, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. He was upset with me, but…” he stopped abruptly.

“Upset? Why was he upset with you if he ended the relationship?”

“It was a mutual decision, but he… he was in two minds about it. Sometimes it seemed like he wanted to continue, and I told him to stop pursuing me because I didn’t want him to change his mind again… I just wanted to end things cleanly.” He shifted nervously in his seat and looked embarrassed. “I’m not proud of it, you know. Being with a married man.”

“I’m not here to make any value judgements. Was he upset to the extent that he might hurt himself?”

“God no. No, he was just his usual, forward self. When he wanted something, he went after it.”

“Were there any conflicts or disagreements at work? Anything that you’ve heard of?”

“Do you think that someone in his office did it?”

“We’re in the very early stages of this investigation, and we are pursuing all lines of inquiry.”

“Of course. No, we didn’t really talk about our work. Opposite ends of the spectrum, you see.”

“We ask all close family and friends this question, just to rule you out as a suspect. Where were you at the time of his death, the evening of the 20th?”

“I was at a fundraising event for my Party, which I was responsible for. There must have been three hundred or four hundred people there, many of who can confirm I was there. It was at the Grosvenor House Hotel.” 

Stella closed her notebook. “That’s all for now. We need you to come in to the Metropolitan Police at your earliest convenience, which means tomorrow, so I’m afraid that this interrupts your leave. Failure to do so will result in a warrant being issued.”

“Yes, that will be no problem, ma’am. Keen to see this resolved as soon as possible.”

“Excellent. My condolences, once again.” 

He looked despairing for a second, as if the weight of his loss had just sunk in, but it was gone by the time he answered.

There was construction work outside the Balmoral. The tram line was being reinstalled after it was deemed outdated in the postwar period. Edinburgh had had the most advanced tram network in Europe, but it was all dug up and replaced in the name of modernity. And now they were relaying it, to the tune of millions and years’ delay. History moves in circles. She crossed to the side of the street lined with shops; Edinburgh’s high street. Princes’ street was most unusual. On the one side there were shops you’d find in any high street in the UK, and the other side had an expansive view over the Princes’ Street Garden, which dipped to a sunken valley of a park and back up again to the Castle, towards the Old Town. She found a Costa to look over her emails, but the first thing she tapped on was Dani’s response.

_Same, ma’am. It would be very nice to see you. Perhaps you could come into our office for a brew? Free between 11-3._

Nadia had sent over the electronic copy of the file they’d found in Grayling’s bag, the MisPers report, as well as a second cold case report. It was ruled a suicide after a short search, when they’d found the body with a gunshot wound to the head. 

“Women don’t kill themselves with guns,” Stella whispered under her breath. She felt that surge of adrenaline again when she noted that the woman had been born and raised in Edinburgh. Her brows knitted in an effort to find the connection.

More information trickled through about Grayling: the wife was ruled out fairly quickly in her first interview after several witnesses confirmed her stay at a mindfulness retreat during the time of his murder. The door-to-door gave no new valuable leads. The post-mortem report was emailed through, but she decided to have a look at that tomorrow when she could go over it with the coroner, who they called Stubborn Steve, on account of his persistent redoing of many of his tests, and absolute inability to change his mind about his practices. Little was known of his last whereabouts, so no CCTV to follow up on as of yet, but that was the key point Nadia was working on today.

***

The police station Dani was at wasn’t far. She walked down Leith Walk, past the Omnicentre, and the roundabout where all of Edinburgh’s queer nightlife was concentrated (a grand total of three bars), towards the more residential area of New Town, with its delis, Italian places, and caffs. Turning into Gayfield Square, where the station was situated, she couldn’t help but be impressed by Edinburgh’s calm wide streets and numerous parks, compared to the dingy busy-ness that was her borough in London. Dani had provided a visitor’s lanyard for her at the reception.

She spotted Dani before she saw Stella, and noted a change in her former colleague’s appearance. Dani had become herself. There was a groundedness, a confidence to her demeanour that had always been present, but not nearly so prevalently. Her hair was longer, and she looked polished, well-taken care of, in a way that really suited her, and was hers, not somebody else’s. When she finally saw Stella, her face lit up with joy. Taking her hands, then enveloping her in a loose embrace, she whispered:

“It is so good to see you, ma’am.”

“Likewise, Dani. You look so well.”

Hearing Dani’s voice was a balm to her soul. A speck of familiarity in what seemed like a huge and impossible case. Dani had always had her back, and there was an understanding between them.

Gesturing to her colleagues behind her, who’d momentarily stopped any pretense of work at their computers and were observing the interaction, Dani introduced all of them quickly.

“O’Malley, Howden, Doran, Henderson, Bell.”

One of them offered: “We’ve heard a lot about you ma’am. The Belfast Strangler, the Camden Cannibal. You’ve made quite a name for yourself, and we’re pleased to have you here today.”

Stella’s initial reaction was to dismiss the praise, after all, the Belfast Strangler had ended so very catastrophically. But that female instinct would never get her anywhere in the police. “That’s very kind of you, sir. I’m delighted to be here. Dani, could we have that cuppa you promised?”

“Of course. This way, ma’am.” 

Once the kettle had been boiled, the tea brewed and the milk poured out, Stella reached out to Dani for help with the case, and explained its Edinburgh connections. “I’ve got two separate links: the case file that was found in the victim’s home, with regards to a Scottish case, and his ex affair, boyfriend, partner, lover, or whatever you’d like to call it, was here for business. And I would love to just get a feel for the lay of the land here and see if there is any Scottish context that I’m missing that might help illuminate what the connection is.”

“I’ve only been here a short while ma’am. But this file” — she patted Stella’s iPad on the table between them, “I share your concerns about it. From what I’ve been told, the Addison case was a big one, not just because she went missing and then a body was found without any leads, but because her sister went missing decades before. We were never able to really draw a connection between them.”

“Could you tell me a bit more about the Addison cold case?”

“Yes, Dominique Addison was an IT Engineer that worked for a mapping company, and had a vibrant life, full of friends and family, an a one-year-old at the time of her death. Suicide never made much sense to me, but it was a way to close the case without taking the blame for failing to solve a murder. It read like a political move to me. They’d looked into stressors, debts, conflict, poverty, all that, and found very little, except for her sister’s disappearance in the late nineties.”

“And how had she coped with that?”

“Well, she was notorious with the police for continuing to contact well beyond the closure of her sister’s case, and when my colleagues talk about it, I felt like they weren’t really taking her seriously, but trying to fob her off with as little effort as possible. It felt condescending, but don’t tell them I said that.”

Stella nodded. “I take it that forensics didn’t turn up much, if there was sufficient evidence that the gunshot was self-inflicted?”

“I suppose so. I haven’t asked. I’m the newbie here.”

“I see. Could you do me a favour, Dani, and see if there was a log made for every contact Dominique had with the police at the time before her death?”

“I can certainly try.”

The conversation came to a natural lull, and Stella looked at Dani again, who apparently felt shy under Stella’s gaze and averted her eyes. Stella took a sip of her tea and kept looking at Dani.

“How have you been, Dani?”

“Oh, I’m alright ma’am. Just settling in here. It’s only for a wee while but everyone’s really friendly.”

“You know you can stop calling me ma’am. You’re no longer my subordinate,” Stella said. Although she meant what she said, she realised in the back of her mind that it still sounded like an order.

“Force of habit, I suppose. Right then, I’m going to find that log for you, Stella.” Dani had found her way out of this line of conversation.

Stella smiled at Dani’s conscious use of her name, and lingered in the break out room to wash up their mugs, tried to scrub the tea stains out of the porcelain with a manky looking brush and leafed through Dominique’s case files again. A couple of minutes later Dani came back in.

“Here’s a print off for you. I can go over it with you if you like, but there’s quite a lot of detail in the description section of the log.”

“That’s quite alright.” Stella had made up her mind in those few minutes alone. She put her hand on Dani’s while exchanging the print off and left it there. Dani tensed, and looked at Stella’s eyes to find her intention. Stella made no bones about the fact that she was flirting, and returned her look. “Since you’re no longer my subordinate, perhaps we could… act on those impulses we had in Belfast. I know that I would like too, and I think you would too. You’ve come into your own, Dani. It’s appealing. Distractingly so.” She could hear Dani’s breath quicken. 

“Now, ma’am?”

“If not now, when?”

Dani took Stella’s hand, entangling her fingers with her own. “This way,” she said, and led her to the disabled toilets off the side of the break-out room, looking around her for signs of her colleagues.

As soon as she’d locked the door, Stella’s hands were all over her.

***

“I cannot stress enough that we are an predominantly an Arts and Education fund, and as such I implore you to only consider applications of that nature,” said David.

“You needn’t come down so forcefully on this, David. It’s just us,” Emily Beauchamp replied.

“I am aware, but at this moment we are acting as the fund’s trustees and must behave as such. We shouldn’t be any less robust because we are related.”

The meeting room was one they had hired. The building styled it as an ‘executive suit’, with a large oval table in the middle, and square, leather chairs surrounding it, in a boardroom set-up. They were close to the City because it was easier for David’s commute, although Ian was the one who had to travel the furthest. One large window overlooked St James’s Square, and Emily frequently took the liberty to gaze indulgently, while her brothers hashed out some detail. They met quarter-annually, and reviewed the applications for funding. The interest on their late parents’ estate was to be spent wisely, as per their mother’s will.

“We have a standing request from the Arts Council from England, which I will assume, that as per usual, we grant, for £40k. Then, onto more contentious ones, the University of Surrey, The Young Vic, The Women’s Library, the Reith Lectures and finally, we have to make a long-term decision on the Race for Pink charity,” said Ian. He cleared his throat nervously. “I take it you all have a print out of the applications with you, as they were sent via email, and I’ll start with the ACE.”

Emily didn’t bother to get involved with many of the discussions, but was incensed about David’s treatment of the Women’s Library request. 

“Like I said at the start, this is an Arts and Education’s fund and women’s stuff doesn’t fit into that, besides, it’s not politically neutral, so I would make an argument for declining this particular application. Besides, we’re a little pressed for time so let’s just move on,” David said. He put his pen down and looked to Ian, who was acting as chair.

“David, as you well know, this is a library, which is educational, and you didn’t hesitate to support Surrey with their library request. It’s a request for an amount that’s below our £5,000 threshold, and they have very clearly demonstrable aims and objectives with their request. If you look at page 4 of your addendum, there’s a clear timeline and impact measure. I say we support it.”

David was about to make a counterargument when Ian shushed them and said: “I agree with David that we’re pressed for time. So let’s just take a vote on it and then move on.”

Emily knew she’d lose before they’d taken the vote. 2-1. Some things never change.

“Finally, there’s Race for Pink. Our donation of £38,429 has worked out well so far, and is only set to increase with inflation and the in-house payscale year-on-year. I move that we discuss setting up a standing donation annually for the next five years, similar to our arrangement with ACE.”

And then there are things you just can’t vote against, even if you wanted to. Ian looked noticeably relieved when it passed unanimously, and loosened his tie a bit. “Very well. I’ll send round the notes, next meeting is in September, location and time TBA. Thanks.” He gathered his notes and buttoned his suit jacket. “How are the girls, Emily?”

“They’re doing well. Just started a new school, since Camden didn’t exactly work out. They’re going to Godolphin & Latymer now.”

“No boarding, then?” 

“Oh, we could never. You must come around for supper, Ian. It’s been ages.”

He made a gesture like he was swatting a fly away. “I’ll let you know when I’m free. Very busy during the summer period. Hectic. Anyway, was lovely seeing you both, I ought to get the train back now.”

***

Dani was buttoning up her trousers, standing with her back pressed against the bathroom sink and Stella was opposite, watching her and running a finger underneath her eye to get rid of mascara smudges.

“How long are you in town for, exactly?” said Dani, while smoothing out the creases in her top, and trying to share mirror space with Stella.

“Just today. Getting the sleeper train back tonight.”

“Oh, I see.” Dani looked at her reflection in the mirror while she was fixing her hair. 

“You’re not disappointed, are you?”

“Of course not,” said Dani, looking very disappointed.

“Good. I’m going to head off, and look over the paperwork you’ve given me. Till next time?”

“Yes. Till next time.”

Stella put her hand on Dani’s waist and gave her a soft kiss on the lips, which was more perfunctory, to mark the end of an interaction than because she wanted to, and she felt for Dani. Dani probably hadn’t wanted it to happen this way. She then left the bathroom, gathered her coat, bag and papers in the break-out room and left without a backwards glance.

The walk to the Central Library was a twenty minute one, and she wondered if she was wasting her time going all the way there, and not nipping into a coffee shop. This was part and parcel of the anxiety she didn’t have before, not to this extent. A recurring, continuous wondering if she could be more efficient, quicker, better, smaller, take up less space and do more. Before she had rested in her ability that had always been quietly noticed by her teachers, Father, lecturers. Now she needed affirmation, encouragement, proof. The walk was marred a stream of tourists, which forced her to weave and dodge the oncoming pedestrians no matter what side of the road she was on. On her right hand side, crossing the North Bridge, she briefly glimpsed the park and the refurbished tenements that, when you squinted, looked contiguous with the Castle, crags of a different kind. Crossing the junction with the Royal Mile, either side was a kind of glorious only whispered in Edinburgh — a fivehundred year old cobblestone street with red telephone boxes, blooming flower baskets by the side of a golden pub name, the right side sloping up towards the Castle, on the left, dipping down to reveal the gorgeous green expanse of Arthur’s Seat. Just hidden from sight was the Palace of Holyrood and the modern, sharp-edged parliament. The tension she’d been holding in from her grinding thoughts just melted away in the face of all this beauty.

She’d wanted somewhere private in the library, and there was a booth available. Carefully, one by one, she got out her notebook, pen, iPad, and the printout she got from Dani. She read the list slowly, occasionally stopping to copy something into her notebook, or to underline and annotate. Two hours passed as quickly as the Caledonian that brought her to Scotland. She pored over every email, status update, statement, photograph, case file, the post mortem, and made a few phone calls to Nadia. She needed to get a clear picture in her head. Like the parliamentary paperwork arranged in neat squares in the evidence room, she needed to know where every last bit of information fit, to stop it swimming in her head. There was a sense of relief, of knowing, once she had placed every last detail in its rightful place, in the correct box. Years of training, aided by an expensive education, had stretched her memory to the point where she was easily able to recall long reports, describe photographs in detail from memory, and understand and read the people involved in the victim’s life. Lastly, she turned to Dani’s log.

Every two months, Dominique would call in with a progress report of sorts. She’d been following her sister’s old friends from school, and had managed to procure photos of Edinburgh’s violent and difficult clients that she suspected her sister, Mairi, had worked with before she disappeared. Sometimes the police would humour her, and a nearly retired detective would sit for an hour with her over coffee and make some notes, although the case had been officially closed. The page she had in front of her was a photocopy of someone’s handwritten notes. It read:

_Ms Addison seems to think her sister had been raped while working (??). This seems implausible considering her work. She pointed to a local politician as a known ‘ugly mug’, but has no way to actually connect the two._

Stella sighed and looked up the detective who led the interview. He was 64, born before just around the first feminist wave, though he clearly managed to miss most of it. This is exactly the kind of blindness that leads to crucial evidence being ignored, she thought ruefully. On the right side of her page, she had created a small table with the names of Mairi’s friends, and looked a few of them up. Dani had been telling her about the areas in Edinburgh that were friendly to sex workers. Unlike the Policing strategy in England, the authorities here mostly turned a blind eye to the activities, and used a harm reduction approach, ensuring that there were supplies for safe sex and access to specialist health care, but good policy doesn’t eradicate bad attitudes. Her phone chimed with a message from Emily asking her to call her back.

“I do need to have a word with you about gallivanting off on the second day of investigation. I give you a lot of leeway, and you’ve always used it wisely, but you’ve baffled me,” said Emily. Stella had rarely heard her be cross — if she showed any anger it was tightly controlled, brimming beneath the surface, but now it was unmistakable in the waver of Emily’s voice.

“Yes, I didn’t do a very good job of explaining myself over email. We’d had confirmation that Grayling had an affair with a Conservative staff member, and I’ve spoken to him today. I’ve also gone into to see some members of the Scottish Police, and obtained evidence that seems to be related to the case.”

“Good, that does sound substantial. Anything from the romantic partner? And did you get anything on the prostitution rumour?”

“He’s coming in tomorrow, and I have doubts about the veracity of his alibi at the time of the murder. I have other, circumstantial evidence that ties Grayling to a possible rape of a sex worker, but I need to do more investigating into his past as this dates back to the nineties.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a pass this time. See you tomorrow.”

***

Her home was her safe place, her haven. But when she let herself in, put her coat away and kicked her shoes off, having just enough time to drop her suitcase off and go to work after returning from Scotland, she could hear the clanging of cooking utensils in the kitchen. 

“Stella, it’s me,” Reed called out from the kitchen.

Reed had stepped into her personal space without asking, just blindly assuming she was wanted. But, she told herself, Reed was only doing it out of the best intentions. She put her suitcase in the middle of the living room, and Reed walked towards her, a spatula still in hand, with the biggest smile on her face.

“Thought I’d make you some breakfast after you were away and had to travel overnight. There was nothing in the fridge, so I took the liberty to stock up. I know you forget to eat sometimes.”

“That’s… so kind of you,” Stella said rather stiffly, and allowed herself to be kissed on the mouth. She stood by the edge of her kitchen island, feeling like a guest in her own home. “I’m so glad you’re here, but I need to get going rather soon again.”

“Of course. I’m nearly done. How was it?” Reed said while she spooned scrambled eggs from a pan onto two waiting plates, garnished with salmon and dille.

“Useful. A lot to take in. I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed again,” Stella answered while she dug through her suitcase to find her phone charger.

“Did you know that Dani is now stationed in Edinburgh? She sent me a message the other day,” Reed said, eyes still trained on the plates that she was seasoning.

“Is that right?” said Stella, avoiding eye contact as well. She gratefully took the plate and they moved to the dining table. “This is lovely, thank you.”

Reed didn’t answer, and tucked in herself.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, really enjoying spending time in this universe and solving the case alongside Stella. Comments and kudos are lovely!


	4. The Square and Compass

Her team was visibly relieved to have her back when Stella came in a little before 9, though Stella could have done with a little more sleep. There was a tickle in the back of her throat, like she was about to get a cold and it made her feel sluggish and fatigued. The first thing she did was catch up with Nadia Todd about yesterday, who gave her the interview tapes to watch and showed her some CCTV footage from Grayling’s last day. He could be seen getting in his car in the parking lot of his constituency office and driving back home, but there was no footage close to his house. Nadia also mentioned a belligerent constituent who had been unpleasant to Grayling according to his staff, and Stella asked her to bring him in. They went into their morning meeting, where after each staff member reported on their activities, they created a board, a visual representation, of connections to Grayling. So far they had:

Richard Kelly  
Marina Tassioni  
Harry Willesden, the constituent

Then, on a separate board, Stella had written out the connections between Keith Grayling and Dominique Addison, and asked Hayes to find out if there were any signs that pointed to Mairi Addison still being alive.

They worked on reconstructing Grayling’s evening before his death, but it was a dead end, since there was nothing in either of his diaries, nor did his staff or wife know. They had taken a few objects from the scene, like his shoes and clothes, bedclothes and bag, but the results would only be out later this afternoon. She took Nadia to see the coroner at the hospital.

Stubborn Steve was in a bad mood today. “There’s really nothing I can tell you that would help you, DSI Gibson, that is not already in the report,” was his greeting to her when they walked in. “The cause of death is asphyxiation, but there are no signs of a ligament marks. Nor was there a struggle of any sort, and we weren’t able to recover anything from his fingernails.”

Stella nodded. “Can I see him, nonetheless?” Steve was working on another body, who was laid out in front of them on a slab. Her palms were facing upward and her legs were slightly spread. Corpse pose, she thought, the aptly named yoga pose that was supposed to help you relax, although she could never, because images of dead people in repose would go through her mind. 

Steve sighed and gestured that they should follow him into the morgue freezer. He keyed in a code, walked over to a storage facility and slowly slid out the body. Nadia followed behind Stella, but kept a few paces’ distance from Keith Grayling’s corpse. Keith was a little paler, and a little more purple since the last time she’d seen him. Purples and blues streaked through parts of his body, like veins of mould in blue cheese. His face was starting to swell. The smell hit her, the sweetness of decay, although it was mixed in with formaldehyde and whatever industrial-strength cleaner they used in here. 

“What did you put the time of death as?”

“It’s in the report,” was his curt answer.

“I know, but… just tell me.”

Steve looked slightly tortured. “I don’t write those things for fun,” he muttered under his breath. “Between 11pm and 3am.”

“Thanks, that’s very helpful. Anything else that’s useful for me to know?”

“Not that I can think of. Well, he was quite drunk at the time of his death.”

After returning from the morgue, Kate, one of the young sergeants, brought Stella lunch while she was reviewing yesterday’s video tapes at her desk. It was a steak sandwich from the deli on the corner. It was a touching gesture, but Stella disliked that her team knew her well enough to know that she frequently forgot lunch, and that she would order a steak sandwich without asking. It was like they knew her weaknesses. 

Around three o’clock, Hayes came in with more information on Mairi Addison.

“So, I’ve contacted a missing children’s charity that tracks all amber alerts, and they had records dating back to the eighties. Can you imagine that? Anyway, there was a sighting in the month that Mairi went missing that matched her description, they’d mistaken her for a teenager, but I looked up the internal records and it was reviewed and decided that no further action should be taken. I think it was probably around the same time the Scottish Police declared her as deceased and closed the case, so there was no point in looking anymore. The sighting was on a train from Sheffield to London.”

“Is that it? I don’t think there’s much we can do about that.”

“Well, the police did speak to the person who reported the sighting, so we could track them down and ask, although it is doubtful that anything will come of it.”

“No, never mind that.” Stella was staring off in the distance, trying to make the pieces come together. “Her sister, Dominique, was under the impression she worked as a sex worker. I know this will create mountains of work for you, but can you check the arrests with photos matching her description around the time of the sighting, starting in London? The city is big enough for someone to move around anonymously, and she probably used a false name, if she was still alive, so that won’t be much help. Then broaden out the scope towards Sheffield. It’s a wild goose chase, but I’m interested to see what you’ll find.”

“Of course, ma’am.” Hayes looked proud to have been given a job to do by Stella, and awaited further instructions.

“That’s all for now, Hayes,” Stella said as her email chimed with something her boss forwarded.

_NEW EXPENSES RULES - all senior mgmt read asap_

She clicked through to the attachment, which was a new expenses form, HR hiring protocol, and a diversity form. Then she pulled up the old diversity form, as that had always been one of her interests, to see what had changed, but couldn’t spot anything off the bat. She rubbed her temples and grabbed her notebook to see Emily and fill her in in more detail on the case. 

Like Steve, Emily was in a foul mood today, which manifested itself chiefly in vaguely annoyed looks and lots of interruptions. But she seemed pleased with the progress that Stella and her team were making and asked for an update when Richard Kelly came in later today. Just as she was leaving, Emily got up from behind her desk and walked with her to the door. She said:

“Just as a tip, Stella, I know that you have ambitions to reach the highest echelons of the Met, and I would just advise you to keep your personal affiliations and interests to yourself.” She gave Stella a meaningful look, although Stella didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“Did some of your colleagues take umbrage at your political views?” Stella asked.

“No, nothing of the sort, I know to keep that to myself. But I let it slip that I run a charitable fund with my siblings, and HR hell broke lose. Conflict of interest and all that.”

That doesn’t add up, Stella thought to herself, but chose not to say it. It seemed Emily just wanted to process this a little with a kindred spirit.

“I see. Is that why I got that senior management email today?”

“Exactly. Consider yourself warned.” Emily winked, and sat back down.

Stella made a mental note to go over it more carefully later today, but right now she had more pressing matters to attend to as she was giving a final briefing to her team before Mr Kelly came in.

Her team was waiting for her in the briefing room. They interview strategy had been reviewed over email, and she had chosen the two promising officers who’d been at the scene initially to carry it out. 

She waited for the chatter to die down and then started her briefing. “So, just to summarise: Richard Kelly was Keith Grayling’s romantic partner for a year, perhaps longer. He claimed to have last seen him two weeks before his death, but we have evidence suggesting he attended the same event as Grayling on the afternoon of Grayling’s death, at a symposium in Parliament. We have not been able to confirm if they saw or spoke to each other at that event. He has a conviction for a violent assault which he carried out in his teens.”

“As always, we have an interview strategy that we do not deviate from. DI Todd is leading the interview with DS Hayes. I will be watching in the video room, and the Chief Superintendent might join me.”

“We are after the facts of the situation. We do not pressure, or cajole, or insinuate. We give Mr Kelly plenty of time to explain himself and ask follow up questions if something is unclear. We will review the transcript of the interview after the fact and will probably need a second interview the fill in the gaps after we have followed up on every piece of information given in the first one. Are there any questions?”

There was always one, usually a guy keen to impress, who would ask something that wasn’t really a question but a statement that showed off his knowledge or preparation. Usually she would dismiss them by answering very curtly, but there was no-one today. The weight of the case focused them and made them work as a team, rather than competing against each other. Stella was pleased and dismissed them.

***

Richard Kelly looked completely unruffled while he walked through the interview room in a crisp blue suit. He was clean-shaven, and his eyes had a warmth that shone strongly no matter how unpleasant the conversation became. He was accompanied by his solicitor, and had a calm, reserved manner, though friendly. The interview room was one of the older ones, slightly dingy, but it would do. There was table in the middle with two chairs on either side, and two chairs next to the door that weren’t being used. The afternoon light didn’t hit the windows straight on, so room was slightly dark and mostly lit by the fluorescent light overhead.

Nadia started the interview. “This interview is being tape recorded. I’m DI Todd, and I’m based at the Metropolitan Police with Major Violent Crimes. What is your full name?”

“Richard Kelly.”

“Okay, thank you. Can you confirm your date of birth for me?”

“9 December 1972.”

“Thank you. Also present is:”

“DS Hayes, working with DI Todd.”

“And your solicitor, Ms Cherry. It is 23rd June 2012, and the time by my watch is 3.09 in the afternoon. This interview is being conducted in the interview room at Islington Station. I just wanted you to be clear that this is an out of custody interview, so you are not under arrest and free to leave at any time. I also need to read out the caution to you. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. And anything you do say may be given in evidence. Are you clear on what that means, Mr Kelly?”

“I am.” He looked straight at Nadia, without any hesitance or doubt. 

“So, the reason for this interview is that your ex-romantic partner, Mr Keith Grayling MP was found murdered in the guest room of his house on June 21. We need to establish your whereabouts at the time of his death to eliminate you from our enquiry, and want to find out any information that you may have on his mental state, conflicts, and associates. Where were you on the evening of 21 June between 11pm and 3am?”

“I was at a Conservative fundraising event at a hotel until midnight, after which I took a taxi home and went to bed.”

“So, when we ask your colleagues about the event, will they confirm you were there?”

“Yes, they will.”

“And where did you take a taxi from?” 

“I walked to the taxi rank at Victoria Station and took the first in the queue.”

“At what time was this?

“Probably a little past midnight. Ten past, twenty past.”

“And where were you dropped off?”

“In front of my house in South Kensington.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, thank you. Moving on to when you last saw Mr Grayling — when was that?

“I probably glimpsed him earlier that day at a work-related event in Parliament.”

“Glimpsed him? Can you elaborate?”

“We attended the same event, but didn’t speak.” 

“And was this the last time you saw him?”

Richard hesitated for a split second. “Ye-es.”

“Mr Kelly? Are you sure?” Nadia was fully alert now. 

His solicitor cut in. “Asked and answered, DI Todd.”

Richard had returned to his calm, steady gaze, ready for her next question.

Nadia looked at Hayes, who jotted the moment down in her notebook.

“And how would you describe your relationship to the victim at the time of his death?”

“Amicable.”

“Just amicable? You told DSI Gibson it was volatile.”

“I didn’t say volatile. Just that he reneged on our break-up sometimes, but I didn’t agree.”

“Was this a source of tension in your relationship?”

“We were working on it.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Sometimes he’d pick a fight, but I was pretty clear that things were over, even though he initiated the split. He had a hard time accepting that.”

“Were things ever violent between the two of you?”

“No, never.”

“When was the last time you fought?”

“The n-.” He stopped abruptly. “I can’t remember.”

“You were about to say something,” DI Todd said.

Richard said nothing.

“I think my client has said all he wanted to say on the matter,” Ms Cherry said. 

Nadia moved on to the rest of the interview.

Inside the video room, Stella was in her element. She was on the phone to Emily to weigh up if this met the evidence threshold for remanding him into custody and typing an email at the same time. She was asking permission for surveillance on Mr Kelly, and putting together a draft of an arrest strategy. She had the junior staff working on his phone data, and sent the DNA samples they’d taken prior to the interview to the lab.

***

“So, tell me, Stella. How did being late go?” Dr Klein, was looking at her with a gentle inquisitiveness, but asking her a question that would make a child roll their eyes with its condescension.

Stella had been lost in her own thoughts, thinking about the case. She really didn’t have time for this nonsense when there was a murderer out on the streets, a boss who counted on her, and staff to instruct. Perhaps she should just reschedule.

“I didn’t do it, Dr Klein. Hadn’t the time. You know I’ve picked up a new case, so I didn’t have much personal time.”

“We’ve spoken previously about your coping style during cases. How do you think you’re doing this time?

Stella interlaced her fingers on her lap and looked down, feeling a little caught out. “I’ve been busy. Look, I think we should reschedule when things are quieter. I’m distracted and I have things to do.” The tree outside Dr Klein’s office didn’t provide much solace today. It was dark out and the street lights didn’t reach it.

“At 8pm? Your rest is every bit as important as your activity for your work.” Dr Klein said. Stella saw she was trying to make an argument on her terms, knowing that her chief concern was being competent at her job.

“Fine. But I just can’t cope with your exercises during this case. It’s...” her sentence trailed off. She didn’t want to admit that it was too much.

“Fair enough. As long as we pick it back up when you have a little more time. So, back to how you’re doing. Have you continued with your habits? Going to bed at a consistent time, eating regularly, scheduling downtime, swimming?”

“To be honest, I haven’t. I just don’t seem to be able to when it’s this busy.”

“And how are you feeling?”

Although this was asked at least once per session, Stella never knew what to say. It seemed ridiculous to her that she should show her emotional underbelly and expect someone to listen to her talk about her feelings. She had heard enough stories and testimonies at work to know that the act of sharing could be healing. But why was it so excruciating?

“Run down. I have an anxiety deep within me that I can’t solve this case, that whoever did this will be never be punished and I would be responsible for it. I know” — she said in response to Dr Klein’s starting to tell her that she wasn’t responsible for a murderer’s actions. “I just feel incredibly guilty. I think what you were saying earlier about not keeping up with my habits, well, that, and Reed’s encroachment… I did something really stupid and slept with an old colleague of mine.” She looked at Dr Klein’s face for a reaction, but didn’t get one. She was wrong. Getting it out did not make her feel better in any way. It just made it real.

***

“I need to know what’s real. You have to stop pretending.” Richard looked at his brother while they were walking down the street after his interview. “There was something between you and Keith and you need to tell me what it is.”

Adam was stoic and aloof. “It would be tremendously stupid to have this conversation right now. Your phone is probably being tracked. They could be watching us. Besides, you’re better off not knowing.”

“Then let’s go home, drop off all our electronics and go for a drive. I can’t bear it, Adam. This betrayal. I need to have some closure. I need to know what happened.”

Adam shook his head and stopped them both dead in the middle of the pavement, to the annoyance of the pedestrians behind them. “Drop it. This is much bigger than you. Just accept that this needed to happen. You can’t let your brothers down — it’s just not an option.”

As tempted as Richard was to argue with that and walk away, he thought it would hamper his chances to find out more. He grimaced and they continued onto the tube. Adam got off at Hyde Park Corner while he continued to South Kensington. 

His home, by the standards of the rest of the country, was modest. For Kensington, it was enormous. It didn’t stop him tearing it up in a matters of hours. Adam occasionally used his study and minded his cat Rosemary when he was away for work. So that’s where he started. He removed all of the books and knick knacks on his bookshelves, checking behind the shelves and thumbing through his books to see if there was something in them. He opened every drawer and removed them from his desk. He checked underneath floorboards and vases, moved the solid square table legs of his desk and loosened the woodwork skirting of his study. 

Just when he was taking a break on the toilet, he noticed that the grout of the tiles in front of him looked chipped. He ran his finger along it, and some of it came away. He put his entire hand flat on the tile and tilted it. The tile stuck to him and moved easily. Behind it, he found a note that said “found it first - KG” in Keith’s hand. The indentations of a small key were pressed into the stone behind the tile. 

“Bastard.” Richard mumbled. He went to his bedroom, and checked to see if there were any items of Keith’s clothing still lying around. He spotted a pair of work trousers in the laundry basket, and patted the pockets. There was nothing there, but he could feel something in the lining, and ripped the fabric. There it was. It’s much easier to find something when you know what you’re looking for. He jiggled each of the floorboards in his bedroom until he hit a loose one in the corner. Underneath, he found a rectangular box that he opened with the key. It was empty, except for a single page. He immediately recognised the logo, the font, the formatting.

***

Reed studiously suppressed the look of surprise on her face when Stella showed up unannounced with a take-away. At 9pm. On a workday.

“It’s not that special,” Stella muttered while she put down the white plastic bags dangling off her wrists in the hallway. Reed had moved to her own place recently, and everything was tidy and neat, no moving box in sight. She reckoned Reed liked fresh starts.

“I’ll take those,” said Reed, while she grabbed the bags and brought them into the kitchen.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Reed asked while she spooned the rice onto the plates. 

“Do I need to have a reason to come see you?” Stella said, aiming for a joke, but sounding serious and defensive.

Reed didn’t reply, and the silence between them grew heavy and stale while she busied herself with cutlery. “I think I know why you’re here,” said Reed softly. “And why you’ve come bearing food.”

This wasn’t how Stella had envisioned it. She’d planned to tell her gently after dinner, when the plates had been cleared away, and they were both sitting down. For some reason, those details mattered a lot in the version that she’d constructed in her head. This was the uneasiest moment. Before the truth came spilling out, when Stella was still looking for words and Reed was still hoping that her fears wouldn’t become reality. 

“I… I have something I need to tell you. Where are the girls by the way?”

“At their father’s.”

“Right.” She paused. Stella couldn’t see a way to do this right, these words that would inevitably destroy so much, so she chose the path of least resistance and just blurted it out.“I slept with Dani when I was in Edinburgh.“ 

Reed didn’t say anything for a while. “Is that what you want, an open relationship? Because if it is, you’re doing it wrong.”

“No, no I don’t. Well, I don’t know.” Stella knew that was the weakest excuse she had given any lover. Except that now she was giving an excuse to the old one, instead of moving onto the next.

Reed had her back turned to her, and suddenly slammed her hands down on the countertop. “Fuck you, Stella. This hurts. You can’t… I don’t get you. I don’t understand one iota of what you’re about.” Reed’s anger had caught up with her. “Get out.”

“Can I explain? Please?” 

“Get. Out.” She said it quietly, tightly controlling her voice, but her heavy breathing showed her anger.

Stella moved towards her, but changed her mind when she saw Reed’s expression change to hurt. 

“Okay. I just want you to know that I’m incredibly sorry. And I want to be with you.”

“You can fuck right off.”

***

Even after swimming for an hour and a half, her mind was still in turmoil. Stella was chilled to the bone because of her wet hair when she came home, and the overcast weather brought a cold snap to a summer’s eve. Perhaps she needed to have a good cry. Or talk to a friend about how stupid she’d been. But she could think of no-one to call, and feared that if she let the floodgates open, she’d never stop. Stella had three other ways of calming down, and two of them involved illegal substances, so she chose work instead. It brought her the oblivion, the single-minded focus that she found so soothing. One of the actions that was really far down on her list, but could easily be done at home was taking another look at those diversity files that Emily had sent her earlier today. She connected to the intranet remotely and downloaded the old ones, and compared them to the attachments that she’d been sent. Much of the change was semantic: the language had been updated around LGBT people and they’d expanded the list of ethnicities to include mixed heritages. It also included a new question about being affiliated to freemasonry. Is that what Emily had been alluding to? But she was a woman, and women weren’t allowed to join. She tried to stop herself from thinking about it. These tiny details were only distracting her from her real work. Emily’s career politics should be low down on her list of priorities.

She got up from her kitchen table and made herself a hot toddy, pouring out the whiskey - she’d bought some on the way to Waverley to add to her collection - spooning in the honey, and dunking the tea bag. She sliced a lemon and squeezed the juice into her mug, then brought it back to her table, and promptly forgot about it while she immersed herself in her work. When Stella popped it back in the microwave an hour later, she lingered near her window while she waited for it to heat up. It was dark out, and she could hardly see anything that wasn’t bathed in the faint glow of streetlights. Rows of cars were parked on either side of the road. A man was leaning on the doors of a silver Mercedes directly opposite her flat. And looking straight at her. He was wearing a suit, but that was all she could make out. They stood there for a moment, watching each other, a stand-off. It occurred to her that he must have a good view of her, silhouetted against the bright lights of her kitchen. He grabbed his phone and raised it to his ear, then got in the driver’s seat of the car. He didn’t drive away, but took a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and directed them towards her, readjusting the lenses for a sharper view. Stella couldn’t fight her instincts any longer and quickly drew the curtains, her flesh goosebumped, the stranglehold of fear travelling down from her throat to her stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly there! If you have any theories about the case I'd love to hear them. Comments and kudos are much appreciated.


	5. Temple of Solomon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for a brief description of rape and suicide.

Stella didn’t want to call into the station, but knew it had to be done. She tried to self-soothe by finally drinking the hot toddy, the warm, sweet liquid gliding down her throat like oil, but it didn’t work. She doubted what she’d seen. That was a threat, wasn’t it? That was purposeful. Fear made her not think very clearly. When she named that what she was feeling was fear, her rational mind slowly came back to her and she realised that she wasn’t just little Stella who felt afraid, but a superintendent with a job that frequently brought these dangers into her life. She rang Emily, who had constables come around immediately, and then surprised herself by calling Reed, who, despite her anger, recognised the vulnerability Stella was feeling and came over. When she let herself in, she found Stella sitting perched on the edge of her sofa, a blanket thrown over her robe, hugging herself.

“Are you okay?” Reed moved over to sit next to her on the sofa, eyes full of concern.

“Just a bit shaken. The constables didn’t see anyone, but they’re checking CCTV,” Stella said, her shop talk an easy escape to slip into, not wanting to admit how awful she felt.

“I don’t think you should be here, Stell. It doesn’t seem safe.”

“Could you stay, for the night? I want to be here, my home, my things, my space, but I’d feel better if you were here.”

Reed stroked Stella’s cheek while Stella rocked back and forth. She’d left before Spector had assaulted her, and couldn’t bear to think that this wasn’t the only time that Stella had felt so violated. 

“Of course, love.” As easy as it might be for Reed to forgive her this one night that Stella needed her, she knew they had to properly work things out later. She sat down next to Stella and hugged her sideways. Stella relaxed and threw her arms around Reed, exhaling finally.

“I’m so glad you’re here. That I don’t have to do this alone again,” she murmured into Reed’s hair. Stella let herself go, and found that her cheeks were wet with soundless tears from the stress, fear and exhaustion of the past week. 

After Stella had cried herself out, Reed ran a bath for her and cleared away her work and dinner things in the kitchen. Stella listened to the sounds downstairs while she soaked in the tub, of plates clanging, water running, and Reed humming a tuneless melody, and she felt like the biggest burden had been lifted.

***

When Stella woke up, her limbs felt heavy and useless, as if a hammer had hit her and knocked her out. Dr Klein was right — she couldn’t keep putting her body through these stressors and expect to stay healthy. She looked over to Reed, who was still sleeping, her dark hair covering most of her face, breathing softly and deeply. In that moment, she felt so much affection for her that she vowed to do better in the future. She nudged her nose into the base of Reed’s neck, at the top of her spine, and stayed there a few minutes before the assault of her day began.

***

The first order of the day was Richard Kelly coming in again, which Nadia led. After cautioning him, she started the interview properly, while Stella watched in the video room.

“We found a hair near Mr Grayling’s body.” She pulled out the evidence bag containing it. “This is item number TU-32, for the tape. It matches your DNA. Can you tell me how your hair got transferred to Mr Grayling’s body on the night of his death, if you hadn’t spoken to each other at all that day?”

Richard took a deep breath and leaned forward in his seat. “Things have changed since I last spoke to you. I — I haven’t been completely honest. Mostly honest, but I didn’t want to tell you that the last time I saw him was at the fundraiser because I was afraid that you might jump to conclusions about... “ he trailed off.

“About?” Nadia asked.

“My involvement in his murder. I have nothing to do with it, nothing at all. But we had a fight that last evening. He drove to the fundraiser, where he wasn’t supposed to go to, because it was party members only, got pissed while he was there, and then started to pick a fight with me.”

“What did you fight about?”

“The same old stuff. How he wanted to get back together, and I didn’t, etcetera, etcetera. I was trying to do my job and he made it very difficult.”

“If that’s true, then why did none of the guests at the fundraiser see him there?”

“I kept him in a separate staff room away from the main hall because he wasn’t supposed to be there. I know this must sound very suspicious, but my whereabouts remain the same. I left around midnight, went home, and woke up to the news of him dead.”

“Anyone who can confirm that?”

“I’m not sure. My phone, perhaps.”

“And why should we believe that Mr Grayling went to the fundraiser?”

“Well, I’m sure that if you check the CCTV on the way from his house to the Grosvenor, you’ll find his vehicle because he drove.”

“Did he drive home drunk?”

Richard flinched, as if he’d just realised something. “I’m not sure. I just left him there at some point, and when I didn’t see him again I assumed he went home.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?”

Richard paused. “Not that I— no. No.”

“Mr Kelly, this is a warrant to search your home and your possessions, which will occur later today. I am also arresting you on suspicion of murdering Keith Grayling and you will be remanded into custody under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.”

Richard’s friendly demeanour changed entirely. His eyebrows shot up in shock and surprise and turned to his solicitor, who was making reassuring noises, but he didn’t seem reassured at all.

***

They found a sheet of paper underneath the floorboard in his bedroom, which was an insert from the MisPers file that had been in Keith Grayling’s bag. Emily thought this tipped the scales even further against Kelly, but Stella felt like there was a missing piece that scratched at her brain that was just out of reach, like a word on the tip of your tongue.

They’d checked his phone records, which indicated he’d been at home and had made no calls or sent any texts, which could just as well mean that he left this phone at home. His vehicle didn’t have sat-nav or electronic devices that tracked gps, so they were left with mileage, which didn’t tell them much at all. But for Emily, it was all wrapped up. The means had obviously been destroyed, the motive was a break down in the relationship, and the opportunity was clear. 

But why would he have the file? Did Keith store it there usually, or was this an anomaly, or some post-break up debris? What had Richard done in Edinburgh the day after the murder? And how did Keith and his vehicle end up at his house? Stella couldn’t make sense of it, and hoped that an in-custody interview would provide more answers.

She was just about to check in with Reed, when DS Hayes stood expectantly at her door. Stella waved him in. 

“Yesterday you asked me to look into the sighting of a woman matching Mairi’s description in the London area. I didn’t find anything, but I expanded the search and found the arrest of a British woman who was released without charge on suspicion of soliciting two years ago. But her name wasn’t Mairi, it’s Magda. The custody report lists similar tattoos as Mairi’s though, as well as a few new ones. I have a copy for you here.”

“I’m very impressed, Hayes,” Stella said, while she opened the folder. The picture looked very similar to a young Mairi, although Magda was blonde and looked at the camera a little more defiantly than the schoolgirl in her sixth form picture she’d seen before. The report noted that she’d been picked up in Chelsea. No matter how affluent the area, sex work never left. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and money and power created the need for the occupation. 

“Can you take a couple of PC’s and visit her at her work today, please? I know it’s bad form but there’s a connection to the Grayling case that I can’t overlook. Ask her to come in for an interview and see what you can find out about her job - no matter if it’s above board or not. Ring me as soon as you leave. We haven’t much time until we need to charge Grayling.”

Stella took a quick break, and even joined the other officers for the first time in a while, one of whom heaped an extra helping of communal salad on a plate meant for her while she grimaced.

“You’ve done well, ma’am, solving this so quickly.”

Mentally putting aside the condescension of a younger officer complimenting a senior one, Stella said: “That’s kind of you, but this is really when our work starts. We need to build an incredibly tight case for the prosecution, and I’m not sure we’re there yet.”

The hollow, anxious feeling only grew while she waited for Hayes’ phone call. The IT data from Grayling’s personal laptop came through, and he’d been searching for Mairi on it, combined with the keywords ‘alive’, ‘rape’, ‘councillors charged’, and ‘race for pink’. She googled the latter herself, and found out that it was a charity that organised an annual 10k, half marathon and marathon to raise funds for fighting breast cancer. It was based in London. She scrolled through the staff list and found a Magda Harrison, whose picture hadn’t yet been uploaded to the staff directory. Her phone went off. Hayes.

“Yes?”

“Magda volunteered to come in, she said that she had things that she needed to share. She works at a charity.”

“Is it Race for Pink?

“Yes, how do you know?”

“Never mind. I want to interview her myself, so come and get me when you get here.” 

Stella hung up and continued to muck about on the charity’s website, and looked at the funding page. To cover their operation costs, they mostly relied on the funds from their supporters, but also had a few grants that supported individual projects, like one from Esme Fairbairn, and a donation from the Beauchamp Foundation.

***

“We are interviewing you in connection to the murder of Keith Grayling MP. You are not under suspicion, and you are free to stop the interview and leave at any time. Do you wish to have a solicitor present?” Stella asked Magda.

Magda was a striking woman in her mid-thirties. You could build castles on her cheekbones, and her presence was elegant and graceful. She impatiently tapped the edge of the table and looked at Stella with an insouciance of someone who knows the law can’t reach her, or who’s been caught a couple times and was indifferent to it. The combination of her fiercely magnetic gaze and her devil-may-care attitude was a very attractive juxtaposition.

“I don’t. Before you start asking questions that just skim the surface of what I want to tell you, let me just tell you the story from the start,” said Magda.

Stella just raised an eyebrow in response. “Very well.”

She told her story flatly, as if rehearsed. “My name is Mairi Addison, and I was born in Edinburgh. When I was nineteen, I was working as a sex worker near Leith and I had a regular who I would see every week. He was a councillor for Portobello in Edinburgh and before it all kicked off, a good client. He just wanted sex, which is the best type of client, because some of them want to tell you their life story, or just want to cuddle and talk, and those are the draining ones. He didn’t. He just wanted the same thing every week, until one day I showed up at the hotel and there was another guy in the room. They bound me, and then they raped me. I wanted to report it to the police, and told a girl I worked with, who said I shouldn’t because the police would arrest me and take my money.”

Stella frowned and wanted to say something, but didn’t know what, and Mairi just kept going.

“Anyway, I didn’t, but it got back to them. And suddenly, my client showed up again and said that he was very sorry and he lay awake every night thinking about it and that he loved me and he had an offer for me which was to move down to London so that I could make more money if I didn’t go to the police. That sounded like a good deal to me, because I’d already decided not to report, and he would stay in Edinburgh, so I wouldn’t see him again. What they didn’t tell me was that what they wanted me to do was to vanish. They took my passport, and gave me a new one with a new name. I’d had a couple of skirmishes with the police before, so I told myself it was a new start.”

“Who were they?” Stella asked. 

Mairi looked annoyed. “I’ll get to that,” she replied. “I moved, and to my surprise I was not only reported missing but declared dead.”

“How did you feel about not seeing your family again?”

“My feelings are none of your concern. Just let me tell you what happened, okay? Right.” She sucked in a breath. “So, they closed my case, and I started working for this so-called exclusive agency for men in the financial sector. I did that for two years, and made very good money. I kept tabs on my sister, Dominique, on Facebook, and when I saw she was pregnant I started to save up for my little cousin. 

“Did you not try to get in touch with them at all?” Stella asked.

“I didn’t, because I was worried about what might happen to them if my rapist found out, but I thought I’d figure out a way to get the money to them. And then I got arrested for working with another girl for safety. I mostly worked through the agency, but sometimes I’d work on the side, and with the way the law works at the moment—”

“You can only get arrested for related charges like brothel-keeping, not for prostitution, so despite it being safer to work with someone who can keep an eye on you, you are more likely to be arrested,” Stella interrupted.

“That’s right. And they can take your money, and some of the girls I knew got deported. Now, the guy I’d come to London with made sure that I was released without charge but basically said that I needed to start doing legal work because it was a pain in the neck for them to keep bailing me out of these situations. And through the first guy, one of my rapists, this job appeared at the charity that I am working at at the moment. But then I heard that my sister was found dead, and they declared it a suicide and it made me reconsider everything.”

“Do you think it was a suicide?”

Mairi leaned forward. “Absolutely not. No way. She had a small child. I know my sister. She needed very little to be happy, and to have a child was her dream. She was born to be a homemaker. I think she was trying to figure out what happened to me and got too close. So I wanted someone to look into it. And I saw in the newspapers that this MP was trying to decriminalise sex work, and I thought he might be sympathetic to my story. So I stopped him on the street once, outside of his house, and talked to him about my case, and my sister. And a month later, he’s dead.”

“But do you seriously think that they’d kill your sister and an MP over a possible rape case?”

Mairi shrugged. “It’s your job to find that out, isn’t it?”

"Fair enough. Do you know the names of your rapists and the people who helped you move down here?”

“I do. Ian Beauchamp was my regular. I don’t know what his first name was, but the other guy’s name was Kelly.”

***

“I need to talk to you for a moment, boss,” said Stella, who was waiting for permission to come through.

“I’m a little busy at the moment. I’d appreciate it if you came in at a different time, or if you could schedule this for our one-to-one,” Emily said. 

“I’m afraid it can’t wait.” Stella’s silence was pointed, and it made Emily look up from the stacks of papers and files spread on her desk. 

“Before I start, I just want to acknowledge that I know this isn’t the right way to do things, and I shouldn’t tell you before I go to the anti-corruption agency, or your senior-ranking officer. But we’ve known each other for so long and I just need to know if you knew about this.”

Emily seemed even more nervous than usual. She looked at Stella with trepidation. “Go ahead, Gibson.”

“It seems that your brother’s name came up in connection to the Grayling case, ma’am. Ian. And a donation that was made from your family foundation.”

Emily had stopped rifling through her papers, and put her glasses down. Her skin looked like all the blood had drained out of it. For a moment Stella thought she was going to faint.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Oh, no, oh no, oh no.” Her mind was racing to connect the silent dots that she couldn’t tell Stella about. She got up, turned around to the window and then sat down again. “I think you should go, Gibson.”

“I think it would be prudent if you came in for an interview so we could investigate the connection. I don’t know if you have anything to do with the donation, but we need to find out more about this so we can close the case.”

“I understand. And you should stick to procedure in this case and inform whoever it is that needs to take charge of this,” Emily said half-heartedly. “I don’t want this to cast shadows on your career. Now, please go.”

Stella could see she was in a fragile state, but her curiosity got the better of her. “Can I just ask, ma’am, what’s going on here? Were you aware of this donation?”

“I’m not going to answer that. I can’t. You know better than to ask.”

***

Stella’s mind was racing. There were so many new developments in the case that it was hard to see the wood through the trees. It was approaching lunch time, and she decided to go for a quick swim so she could process it all.

Stella signed in at the Cally Pool on Caledonian Road and was met by the pungent smell of chlorine. The changing rooms squicked her out so she brought shoes and changed as quickly as she could before heading to the large pool to swim lengths. Even amid the crowded Monday afternoon groups of professionals and the noise of children learning over at the smaller pool, the physicality of it brought a wonderful kind of clarity to her thinking. Her back and shoulders were relieved of all the tension they’d been carrying, and the fact that she didn’t have to work actually made her want to think about the case. 

If Ian Beauchamp had made the donation that created Mairi’s job, then they had conclusive proof that he’d been involved with her disappearance in some way. However, what it didn’t prove was that there was a link between Dominique’s death or Keith Grayling’s. Ian and Keith were both politicians, although for different parties, as a quick search had shown that Ian was still with the SNP. And how had Keith come into possession of Mairi’s file? Mairi didn’t have it, and it would be unlikely that one of Keith’s assistants had access to confidential police records. The other thing they’d found at Richard Kelly’s flat was a small piece of paper wedged behind a bathroom tile that said ‘found it first - KG’. They were analysing it at the lab at the moment, but it suggested that Keith found something that Richard had hidden in his house. But why would he find it ‘first’, and for whom did he leave the message if it was just the two of them? The other question mark that remained was how Keith had got home that night if Richard didn’t drive him. In her gut, she felt that Richard Kelly was innocent, but she had no explanation for it. DNA analysis had turned up just Keith’s and his wife’s DNA in his vehicle and only Kelly’s in Kelly’s vehicle, and the CCTV they found from that night on the way back was so blurry and badly-lit that it could have been any average-sized white man. If she took Richard Kelly at his word, which so far she hadn’t done, and reckoned seriously with the possibility that he’d left Keith there at the fundraiser and was as pissed as the toxicology report suggested, there must have been a third party that drove him home. Perhaps she should go back to the drawing board and find out who else had been there with a motive to kill him. 

The other thing to consider was that if Emily had truly been involved in keeping Ian out of this investigation, then some of the advice she’d given had probably been biased. It suggested that the link that Mairi had made, that Keith had been killed because of his investigation into her case, should be given more credibility, even if she had absolutely no evidence to prove it. The fact that the killer, Ian perhaps, would go to such lengths to stop a rape investigation proved there was more to it than meets the eye. A rape case, even very high profile cases, usually amounted to very little, with a strong probability that the perpetrator gets away with it, especially in the case of a sex worker. She made a mental note to check if Ian had been at the fundraiser, though she was doubtful. If it wasn’t the rape that that they were covering up, then what was it? Was it Dominique’s suicide that actually turned out to be a murder?

Her muscles felt sore and tired. She knew she was going to get a good night’s sleep because she had worn out her body as well as her mind. She padded to the changing area, which was mixed, which she disliked. The soles of her shoes squished with each step. Her swim cap had flattened her hair, but it was still completely dry. She pulled her fingers through it and sprayed some Elnett on it to put some of the volume back in it. The woman looking back at her in the mirror was much more equipped to deal with what lay ahead of her than the broken down version she had been just after she returned from Belfast.

Caledonian Road wasn’t as built up as its proximity to Central London suggested. The pavement was wide, and the shops plentiful - a Co-op, fried chicken shops, cheap hair salons, a plethora of pizza places, several stretches of bright blue and dark red shop fronts. She turned left when she hit Gent’s Canal, and looked into the living rooms of the houseboats that were anchored along the side of the canal. The water was gently lapping at the shore, but the wind was getting stronger, and a few drops of rain landed on her shoulder. Her mind wandered to Reed, and she made plans to talk to her and work things out.

When she got back to her desk there was a form on it, asking her to fill out the new diversity form for HR. She chuckled as she ticked ‘woman’, hovered over ‘do not want to declare’ for the sexuality question, and then ticked ‘bisexual’ anyway, and put a large scribble through the Freemason question, which was also new. ‘Does not apply, see question 1,’ she wrote.

It got her thinking. She pulled up a list of known Freemasons in politics, and started with Keith, who wasn’t on it. He was an unlikely candidate anyway, she thought, as most Freemasons were Conservatives, with a few exceptions. She typed in Ian Beauchamp’s name, and her heart starting beating faster as his name became highlighted on the list. Then, she tried Richard Kelly, with no luck. As she deleted his first name to to search for ‘Dick’ Kelly, another Kelly became highlighted on the list. Adam Kelly. She wrote down both names in her notebook with the connections to Freemasons and tried others — the constituent who had been unpleasant to Grayling, members of his staff, but no-one came up. She let out a breath she’d been holding and massaged her temples. Could, Adam, the brother who’d been waiting patiently in the waiting room during Richard’s interviews, actually be the one who they were looking for? 

She googled his picture and took him in. A bald man with a predilection for neutral suits. Someone who’d be easy to miss, hard to spot in a crowd. To what lengths would he go to protect a fellow Freemason? She pondered what she knew about the organisation for a minute, the world of men that had infiltrated and maintained the status quo at every prestigious institution, from the law to politics, academia to journalism, until an insight struck her. But how could she have been so blind? After all, Mairi had told her that it was the both of them who had raped her, Beauchamp and Kelly. But it had been Adam, not Richard. She’d focussed on the wrong member of the same family.

That was the thing that had bonded Ian and Adam. The link had been there, she just hadn’t seen it, like the nearly-retired police officer in Edinburgh, worldviews diverging so sharply that it obscured seemingly obvious details and patterns. And if anyone would feel entitled and powerful enough to send a threat to a senior Met officer in the form of a man with binoculars, it would be a Freemason.

She called Todd, brought her up to speed and asked her to bring Adam in immediately. She’d wanted to go to Emily for permission to release Richard, but remembered that she still needed to ring her senior officer to disclose that she was connected to case and should be taken off and investigated. She thought it would be courteous to go over to Emily’s office and tell her that all hell was about to break loose. 

Emily’s office was a square box of frosted glass in the middle of the incident room. The glass was meant to represent accountability, a metaphor for the supposed transparency of senior management, but all it ever did was make confidential conversations very difficult without a trail of gossip following you around the office. But she needn’t have worried about it. The shutters were drawn, and the office looked dark from the outside, the flow of light inhibited on all four sides. She walked up to Hayes, who was standing by the watercooler.

“Is she in?” Stella asked, nodding her head towards Emily’s office.

“Think so,” Hayes said. “Haven’t seen her leave.”

Stella went up to her door and knocked on it. No answer. She waited for a few seconds, then noticed a large shape that was slightly darker than the rest of the room in front of her. She jiggled the door handle, expecting it to be locked, but it flew open.

Stella felt, before she saw. Her system was completely overtaken by the feeling of shock, then horror, and then needing to retch. Hayes had been watching her from the back and ran to her. 

“What is it?”

Stella’s wide-open eyes told him what he didn’t want to know. Stella was looking at the sight of Emily dangling from the ceiling, a noose grabbing her by the throat, and a chair kicked over by her feet. Her neck was cricked and her gaze vacant. Her arms were unnaturally relaxed, and her feet pointed down. 

Stella was trembling and averted her eyes from Emily’s body. “It’s always the women who pay,” she said in response to Hayes’ question, while he yelled for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that ended on a rather bleak note... let me know if you want an epilogue! I hope that the chapter made sense and that you enjoyed it. 
> 
> I'd really appreciate constructive feedback -- you can send me an email if you'd like at thestarsonyourskin@gmail.com.


	6. Blazing Star

It was an astonishingly clear day, the heat beating down on a sun-starved landscape. The Caledonian rounded the last few bends along the coast before haltingly pulling into its final stop, Waverley. Mairi’s nerves moved from a simmering pit of worry in her stomach to constricting her throat. She hadn’t been here in so long. Walking out of Waverley, she noticed the construction that had changed the station she so loved, yet much of it remained the same to what she remembered. This was home, but London was home also. She had decided on the train that she would walk uphill across New Town, right through Stockbridge to her mother’s house, where Angelica, her mum and a police officer were waiting for her. The walk was emotional, reminding her how long this city, so dear to her, had been off-limits, and to see it now, the wide streets, the shops and restaurants, the symmetrical and ornate houses, was anti-climatic and mundane, but also deeply meaningful. The hours she’d spent at Wellington Coffee on the corner of George Street during her first year at uni, the taxi rank on Hanover Street, where’d she’d pack too many friends into one taxi after going out clubbing on Rose Street. The view of the harbour stretching out many miles ahead of you, a speck in a crowded tableau of cityscape and landscape once you climbed the hill that left your thighs burning. She got a lump in her throat when she turned into the street that her mother lived on, where she walked past rain-ruined hopscotch marks. It wasn’t her childhood home, but she’d spent her teenage years there after her parents’ divorce, and there had been times when she thought she’d never see it again. Over the years she had made her peace with that idea, telling herself that her new life was enough, that she was doing well now, and that was surely what her mother had wanted for her.

***

Angelica’s hand slipped into hers, in the casual way that children have before they become self-conscious, while twigs crunched underfoot at the cemetery where Dominique was buried. The gesture was small, but nearly set off the flood of tears that was hiding behind Mairi’s eyes, that she’d kept in even when her mother pulled her into her arms after a decade of estrangement. She never knew how much she needed this. Angelica was six now, and she hid behind her grandmother when Mairi sat down at the kitchen table and they waited for the tea to finish steeping, but she gradually stopped putting her face in her grandmother’s top and then told Mairi that she wanted to show her the drawings she’d done at school, and took her upstairs to her bedroom, where she put on her pink tutu and attempted a pirouette, a froufrou swirl of her girlhood.

“It’s over here,” Fiona said. She bent down to lay roses on Dominique’s grave. 

Mairi looked over at her little niece, who didn’t seem very interested in the grave but was mostly watching the adults to see if she should be sad. Then she noticed a squirrel and ran after it for a few steps, stopped, and tried another pirouette in the rich verdant. She was still wearing her tutu with rhinestones on the edges of the pink tulle that glimmered in the early morning light. Mairi took her mother’s hand, accepted one of the roses and laid it on the headstone. 

Dani Ferrington had been holding back from the Addison women to give them a little privacy. Fiona hadn’t wanted to talk about the case with Angelica in the room before Mairi joined them, but Angelica was playing by herself in the grass, so she walked over to them. 

“Do you want to talk a little about the new investigation now?” Dani asked. 

Fiona kept her eyes on the gravestone, so Mairi replied instead. “Yes, I’ve been wanting to know.”

“So, when we reopened the case, we looked a little closer at the laptop that Fiona had kept, that Dominique used to look into your disappearance. And we found that she had contacted Ian Beauchamp from a list she’d been sent, a list of difficult clients. She’d asked about your disappearance. Our colleagues in London, including DSI Stella Gibson, who you’ve met, had been holding him in custody following his confession of your rape, so we put this to him. He said he panicked and started to stalk her, and realised that her early morning jog was an opportune moment to tell her to stop investigating.

Fiona scoffed. “I’m sure that’s what he said,” she said with a dark note of sarcasm.

“Well, those were his words,” Dani said. “I think his intention was probably to threaten her. We’re unclear on what happened next, but we think that he had a gun in his possession from his connections with other criminal activity. He hasn’t confessed, but we have enough evidence to charge him. We found that through his Masonic activity, he had enough influence and connections to close the case and declare it a suicide. Personally, I’d presumed it was incompetence that bungled the case, but it turned out to be a little more sinister. We’ve started another investigation, an internal one, to clear this up. It turned out that one of the senior officers in London, his sister, Emily Beauchamp, had provided her brother with confidential police files as well. ”

Fiona nodded. Her expression hadn’t changed much. Her daughter was still dead. If it was closure or retribution she was meant to feel about the murderer being tried, she came up empty. Sometimes she felt these cases had taken most feelings out of her entirely, like a well that had been drained and never saw rain.

But Mairi was relieved. The shadow that had been lurking in the corner of her subconscious was gone. She was free to go where she pleased, work where she liked, and to see her family again. Her rapists had confessed. But the harrowing contradiction of gaining her mother and niece, and fully grieving the loss of her sister was not merely bittersweet, it was two extreme emotions mixed together in a way that she felt no-one else on the planet had experienced. For years, she’d heard her sister’s voice in her ear when she didn’t know what to do, or felt alone and lost. And she had unconsciously fully counted on hearing that voice in real life again, some day. But being here on a clear summer’s day at her sister’s grave in a leafy graveyard made her death so much more tangible. This is where she actually lay, her body no longer her soul’s address, and her spirit gone. She crouched down and traced the lines of her name on her gravestone. Angelica had been watching her closely, crouched down, and did the same. Angelica’s small hand grabbed Mairi’s index finger and held onto it, and she rested her cheek against Mairi’s shoulder. 

“Can you tell a story about mum? she asked.

Mairi smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind her niece’s ear. “Well hen, when your mummy was your age, she had a tutu just like the one you’re wearing right now...”

***

“Ma’am, are you free to talk right now?” Dani asked. She was back at the station, and was using one of the interview rooms so that no-one could hear her.

Stella was at home, wearing her soft clothes; fleece-lined joggers and a top that had been washed so many times it had lost its shape entirely. She sat down on her sofa and pulled a blanket over her, her notes and a couple of printouts by her side. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore her favourite socks. “I am,” she replied.

“Right so, just to fill you in on some of the results of the new investigation, it turned out that one of our Police chiefs was a Mason as well, and we are still questioning him about what exactly he agreed to, in terms of closing the investigation when he could.”

“Dani, I’m on leave...” Stella started, but Dani kept on with her briefing. 

“It’s possible that they cleaned the murder weapon on the scene, of prints and other DNA material,” she said quickly. “I was shocked, really, at the brazenness of it all. I can’t imagine going into the police force and not pursuing justice.” She stopped when Stella didn’t reply. “Wouldn’t you agree, ma’am?”

“Well, sometimes it seems it’s more of an inevitability than the reverse,” Stella said. “All the little ways in which you are sometimes forced to cover for a friend, or a mentor, or a boss.” She allowed a pregnant pause in the conversation, and rubbed her face. “Dani, I want to apologise to you.”

“Oh, there’s no need, ma’am,” Dani replied hastily.

“No, there is. I didn’t treat you with the respect you deserve. I used you for my own ends, and you are worth so much more.” Stella spoke slowly, choosing each word deliberately.

“That’s nonsense, Stella. I wanted it as much as you did. It was entirely consensual.”

“I know. But that’s quite a blunt measure. I should have been mindful of the power differential that still exists between us, and the different reasons we wanted to have sex. I needed a quick release, and I think, and this is an assumption, that you wanted more.” Stella hoped that Dani wasn’t insulted by her guesswork, or defensive about it. 

“But I would rather have had the experience than not have had it at all,” Dani said with a hint of vulnerability. The conversation was making her skin crawl, but she wanted to be honest.

Stella was touched. “I get that. I just… I wish things had been different. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I acted so rashly. I’d like to be friends with you.” The words coming out of her mouth surprised her. Friendship was not something she extended frequently, and when she did, it was with sincerity and loyalty. 

Dani smiled into her phone, then realised Stella couldn’t see that. “I’d like it too.”

“Excellent. Stop calling me ma’am.” 

Dani chuckled. “I’ll try.”

Stella’s doorbell rang. “I’m afraid I have to go now,” she said.

“Okay, Stella. Talk to you soon.”

“Bye now, Dani.”

Nadia Todd was at the door, wearing Stella’s usual attire of a pencil skirt and a blouse. The skin underneath her eyes was blue and her face looked pale. But her eyes were sparkling. She carried a large purse with a laptop sticking out of it, and still had her car keys in hand.

“Come in Nadia,” Stella said. “Coffee or tea?” She’d been expecting her.

“Coffee please,” she said while she walked to the living and made herself comfortable on Stella’s sofa, pushing her notes and papers aside. She’d been here before, but was looking around with interest. It was like seeing your teacher had a life at home.

Stella returned with a tray of two mugs, milk and sugar. “Before we start,” she said, “you should know that I’d known Emily for half a decade. I did look up to her, and how this whole thing ended… it’s so undignified.”

Nadia nodded slowly. “It’s deeply sad. Are you okay to hear more about the results of the Anti-Corruption Unit’s work? You can tell me to stop at any time.“ She was being blunt and impatient, but she couldn’t wait to get her boss’s reaction on the news.

“I am, and I’m curious.”

“Okay, well, I’ll start from the beginning. This was all gathered during numerous interviews with Ian Beauchamp, Adam Kelly, Keith Grayling’s staff, Lothian Police, and data that the Anti-Corruption Unit has known for years. It turns out that the web is so much bigger than just Emily. I’ll start with the MP.”

Stella tucked herself into her seat, and clasped her arms around her knees. 

“Keith Grayling was widely known as a middling MP. He had his pet issues, and focussed obsessively on them, and mostly put himself out of the running for promotion within the party. He didn’t care too much about his own standing in the party, but worked on a housing plan for his borough, an obscure union which I’ve forgotten the name of, and a couple of other issues that no-one bothered to look at. But it actually turned out that he was quite successful at looking into the decriminalisation of sex work. He had managed to get a lot of female MPs behind this idea, mostly from the left of the party, and appealed to some Tories who are libertarians. There was a working group, and a week before his death it looked like they might get a cross-party bill off the ground. No-one had expected this. It got the attention of some of the higher ups across the political spectrum, who had vested interests in the status quo. He was simultaneously looking into Dominique’s death, but I have no idea to which extent he knew that his boyfriend’s brother was involved.”

“So this was more political than personal?” Stella asked. She was sitting back in her armchair, letting it all wash over her as if she was listening to Radio 4. 

“Not quite -- I’ll get to it. I don’t think you can say it’s either/or, as you’ll see. Adam Kelly told us that he was ordered by another Mason to ‘deal with him’, which was left open-ended. We have reason to believe that this Mason is a Conservative member, and that if Adam had refused, his career would have been in jeopardy. He tried to sabotage the working group at first, by sowing discord among its members and stalling the bill. But it still looked like it was getting a first reading. Adam Kelly said, and this should be taken with a grain of salt, but he said that he was ordered to kill him. So all of this came from our interviews, and the Anti-Corruption Unit got involved, because according to them, this fits the profile of someone who has this kind of power in the political arena, and is behind a string of murders in politics and the Met for several decades.”

“Several decades?” Stella said incredulously. She had suspected a more organised network of corruption than the boyish, bullish male incompetence she had first encountered in lower ranks, but this was really very serious. This case was like the spume on a much larger wave that started around the time the Met was founded, and on some days, she feared, would only end when it morphed into whatever surveillance project was adept at policing the spectre of the future.  
“Yes. I was as gob-smacked as you are. The description they have at the moment is of someone who was Emily’s rank or above.”

“Are you saying that Emily was the corrupt police officer?” Stella asked with alarm, seeing her image of her boss completely shattered by these posthumous revelations. A piece of her blonde hair escaped her ponytail, and she tucked it impatiently behind her ear. She realised this was a fecund environment for the conspiratorially-inclined and hoped that the gutter press wouldn’t get their grubby mitts on any of this.

“They don’t think so -- because of the Masonic affiliation. Emily would have been excluded as a woman. They think she went along with her brother’s requests for donations and confidential information out of family loyalty. Her brother claims that his Masonic contact promised Emily to reveal who the corrupt officer was if she did what she was told.” 

“Well, I highly doubt that,” Stella said. “But I can see how it might have appealed to Emily. And the shame she must have felt when she realised that she had been played.” She shook her head. “Poor Emily. That’s a shitty hand she was dealt.”

Nadia was looking past Stella at the street-level window, clearly off in her own mind. “It is, but she could have responded differently, couldn’t she?”

“How?” Stella replied tersely.

“She could have refused to provide the donation to Ian, or the confidential files. She should have know that it was not in the Mason’s interest to reveal the identity of the corrupt officer. That would have shown real integrity.”

This touched an unlanced boil of resentment in Stella, and she replied with uncharacteristic edginess, speaking quickly. “But perhaps she didn’t know that Ian, or the intermediary were Masons, so she couldn’t have made that judgement. Besides, the foundation was run by the three of them and required a majority vote by the trustees, not a unanimous decision. They could have gone ahead with the donations without Emily’s consent. I agree with you on the files, but perhaps there’s still a piece of the puzzle that’s missing. She was working in a network that was overwhelmingly weighted against her, and trying to do some good by going along with it and perhaps catching a higher up when she could. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was carrying out her own investigation and that she had stacks and stacks of information on him.”

“Like you are, ma’am?”

“Sorry?”

“Trying to do some good in a system that’s weighted against you?”

Stella sighed. “Aren’t we all?” She slapped her hands against her knees and said: “Right, time for something stronger, don’t you think?”

Nadia smiled at the prospect. “Yes please.”

Stella came back from the kitchen with two tumblers and a bottle of whiskey. “Nadia, there’s something I noticed that I wanted to chat to you about.” She paused while she poured them both a generous finger. Nadia pulled some stray hairs back into her ponytail, and waited for her boss to speak.

“You know, we just talked about male incompetence, and corruption, and all the ways in which our profession is weighted against us, and how we are made to feel smaller and less capable. And, I know, trust me, I know, how tempting it is to want to try and be the best police officer you can be so that they can’t criticise you. But they will criticise you. And if they can’t find a legitimate reason to criticise you, they’ll find an illegitimate one, and then you’ll be left trying to fit yourself into that box. But the box will become smaller and smaller, and you will be less able to fit into it the further you progress. There’s a reason for that. It’s because this profession wasn’t built for us, and they don’t want us here. And I’m not saying that they do it consciously, but it is a fact.” She looked to Nadia to see if she was following. Nadia was frowning. Stella continued: “And all of that means, you don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to say ‘how high’ when they say ‘jump’.” 

Nadia interrupted her: “But I like doing well, and I’ve done well all my life. I haven’t run into any issues so far. I don’t think it’s naive to listen to constructive feedback.” 

Stella smiled ruefully, recognising these arguments from her younger days. “I know you do well,” Stella said. That’s why you’re here. But the criteria for doing well will change, and it’ll keep changing and you’ll run into walls. Before you do, I just want you to know that you don’t need to feel guilty about it. It’s not you. Lord knows I would have been a different woman if I’d known that when I started. The only thing you need to do is listen to that voice inside of you that knows what integrity looks like, even if it’s a little unorthodox. Even if you need to stand up for yourself, and demand airspace, especially if you need to stand up for someone on her behalf. I mean, look at this fucking mess of a case. Do you really need to be overprepared and work twice as hard to stand out like a star in this sea of darkness just to get noticed?

Nadia was looking at her hands, taking it in. 

“And when you come across women who are wading through the same morass, give them the benefit of the doubt. You are in it together, and they are not your competition.”

“I know,” Nadia said, a little defensively. “I just don’t think women are above critique.”

Stella nodded. “That I would most certainly agree with.” She saw her own reflection mirrored in the black glass vase on the table, and rubbed her temples. Nadia wouldn’t understand this just yet. But perhaps later she would remember this moment when she’d fallen down herself, and it would be a little easier to get back up. 

The doorbell rang, and Stella went to open it. 

“I think I’m a little early,” Reed said. Her voice sounded melodic and beautiful to Stella’s ears.

“That’s no bother at all.” She leant over to kiss her, and a shimmering pining lodged itself just below her navel. “Nadia, from work, is still here.”

Reed noticed the tumblers and whiskey, and eyed them with suspicion, then greeted Nadia. 

“Right, I think it’s time for me to head off,” Nadia said, looking at Reed with curiosity. Stella didn’t introduce her. “You’ll be back in on Monday, yeah?”

“Yes,” Stella said. “Just needed to be away during the internal investigation. And well, it’s been nice to have some time to recover,” she said and smiled, holding open the door for Nadia. 

“Sure. I’m not going to the funeral, so see you Monday.”

As soon as Nadia had left, Reed said: “she’s pretty,” and paused. 

“Hmm,” Stella replied. “She’s my junior at work. Very promising officer. She came over to talk me through the results of the investigation into Emily’s death.”

“Right.” Reed said, and did that thing again where she said everything with what she didn’t say. Her arms were crossed and she still had her coat on. 

Stella took a look at her girlfriend and knew exactly what she was thinking. “Reed, there’s nothing going on between us. I just brought out some whiskey because I… I wanted to give her some advice about what it’s like to be a senior female officer in the Met, and it changed the tone of our discussion. It gave her permission to be a little more informal.”

Reed nodded. “This is going to take time, Stella. I’ll stop being suspicious when there hasn’t been anything for me to be suspicious about for a long time.”

“Yes.” Stella walked over to Reed, and gave her a hug. “And I’m so glad you’re giving me that time,” she whispered into her ear. This Elysian hope she’d held onto ever since she started considering Reed as her girlfriend became less otherworldly and more everyday, the more she ground herself in the work of being with her as she was, than the seductively cynical fast-forwarding of the film in her head she dreaded the ending of. 

“I should really get dressed,” Stella said. 

“I’ll come with,” Reed said, and they both went upstairs. A magnetic frisson traveled through Stella’s being as Reed watched her undress.

***

Stella took Reed’s hand when they walked in a line into the church where Emily’s funeral was held, in a village in Kent, just outside of London.The luminous pastel blue of the sky was at odds with a shadowed day. The church was an early Medieval one, with white walls, blocked arches and wooden beams across the ceiling. It was a little too small for the crowds of people that had come to say goodbye, and some of the latecomers lined up against the back wall. Stella blended in with the rest of the Met officers, who were all wearing their uniforms, while everyone else wore black. Emily hadn’t gone willingly, and the atmosphere was all the more sadder for it. Her family, her husband and three girls, were swollen-faced and openly crying. They took their seat at the end of the wooden pews. When they sat down Stella felt a deep ache inside of her, a voice telling her that this was all somehow preventable, that it needn’t have happened. She breathed in deeply to stop the sadness overtaking her. Reed sensed it and put a hand on hers, which made it even more difficult not to cry.

Emily had been absolutely devoted to her work, and it showed -- some of the speeches were a little impersonal. But her husband told a heartbreaking story of how she’d been looking forward to the arrival of a case of wine that marked their wedding anniversary, and it finally arrived on the day she died. He couldn’t bring himself to open it. It perfectly encapsulated how unfinished her life was, even now. Stella vowed to take up the work Emily couldn’t finish, like she had so many times before when she attended funerals, knowing it wasn’t a blithe promise but an until-death-vow that would follow her like a stalker for the rest of her life. The service was one of unanticipated brevity. During hymnals, some of the attendees turned their hands skywards, in a borrowed move from their North-American cousins. It was oddly out of place, and stuck with her for a long time. How can anyone praise a life so thoroughly and violently terminated?

***

Reed’s kitchen had a red coffeemaker, a red oven, red tea-towels and her girls’ toys everywhere. A kettle was on its way to hitting its top-note. The countertop window showed an un-Augustlike drizzle, her garden stained a vivid, dark green. Stella had just nodded to Reed’s question, and Reed was yelling her girl’s names. The two women stood hip-to-hip in serene amity, and Stella felt ready. Poppy and Lily came tumbling down the stairs, knowing there was a visitor downstairs, pretending to be very grown up and coming off as very precocious indeed, and then ruined it by giggling uproariously the moment they saw Stella in the kitchen.

“Are you mummy’s friend?” Poppy said, ever the more outgoing one, who ran to her mother’s hip.

“Yes, I’m her girlfriend,” Stella said, not knowing whether to crouch down or keep standing up. 

“I’m Poppyyyyyyyy,” she said, whilst tugging her sister along by the sleeve towards Stella. “Is a girlfriend different from a friend?”

“It means that we are in a relationship,” Stella explained.

“Idon’tknowwhatthatis,” Lily mumbled. Poppy shrugged in response to her sister, swung her hands side to side and asked “can you play Lego with us?”

“Of course,” Stella said, and the girls went into the living room to fetch their box of Lego. 

Reed smiled. “You can just tell them that I love you like I loved their father.” 

“Is that so?” Stella asked playfully.

Now it was Reed’s turn to be shy, and Stella saw Lily’s likeness in her mother. Her eyes had a faraway, dreamlike quality and her mouth was bent in a bashful smile. 

“Come here,” Stella said, while she pulled Reed in for a hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really the end! I'd love to know if you have any more questions and would be really happy to talk about them in the comments. It might be interesting to know that this was partially based on current events. Not the murder-y, Mason-y bit, but Keith Vaz MP was led an inquiry into sex work with a report that recommended decriminalisation (yay!) until the Daily Mirror published that he'd been buying the services of male sex workers. You can also find me on tumblr now. thestarsonyourskin.tumblr.com


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